


That, I Promise

by salt_n_pepa



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes - Freeform, Canon Compliant, F/F, King T'Challa - Freeform, Nick Fury - Freeform, These other characters make very minor appearances, mostly - Freeform, sam wilson - Freeform, steve rogers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-16 04:22:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11246220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salt_n_pepa/pseuds/salt_n_pepa
Summary: My submission to the CapRBB! A Natsharon fic inspired by Sarah's lovely artwork. It follows the two of them through the aftermath days after the ending of Civil War. After the truth comes out about whose side they were really on, it's a race against the CIA to get to safety.





	That, I Promise

**Author's Note:**

> So hey! This is my submission to the Captain America Reverse Big Bang! It was inspired by Sarah's lovely artwork down below! I wanted to give a quick thanks to the mods for organizing all this, it looked really complicated and frustrating and they really came through for us all. And of course thank you to Sarah for making such awesome artwork, without it this fic wouldn't exist :)

Artwork by Sarah ([@busyfollowingbees](http://busyfollowingbees.tumblr.com))

 

* * *

 

 

“T’Challa told Ross what you did, so, they’re coming for you,” said Stark with a pained snark that Natasha had long since stopped pitying.

“I’m not the one who needs to watch their back,” replied Natasha before taking the head-start Stark had allowed her. Out running the government had never been a challenge for her, in fact it had been her main pastime most of her life. But back in those days she’d always had a destination. She’d always had a goal in mind. Her life was tumultuous in that she jumped from mission to mission and loyalty to loyalty but she’d never found herself in any scenario like this. She’d always had somewhere to jump to.

Stark hadn’t had a clear thought in years, Bruce had been MIA for a year. Only one other safe house came to mind. She hot-wired one of Stark’s many cars and circled her way out of the carport. She reached for her phone and dialed a familiar number before coming to her senses and realizing if she put the call through it’d no longer be a safe house. Besides, Clint was supposed to be off-grid these days. He was supposed to be enjoying his life and raising his kids not picking up the pieces of Natasha.

If she could, she would join Steve in a heartbeat. She should’ve joined him in the first place. Steve would tell her there was no way for her to know how it would turn out but there were hints. Stark hadn’t made one logical decision ever since he pulled his suits out of retirement. She felt she should’ve known how sour the whole situation would turn. Now Steve and his friend were off _somewhere,_ Sam and Maximoff were locked up still, and Clint was probably with them. Part of her wondered if Steve really was in some safe haven with Barnes and was waiting for the right moment to gather up Sam, Wanda, and her to join them. But a much larger part of her knew that speculating about the dreamland her closest friends had found themselves in would only depress her.

So she focused. She needed somewhere to stop and regroup, somewhere to figure out her next move and clear her head. She tossed her phone onto the edge of the Avengers Compound lawn and sped through the closed gate. Stark had let her leave, let her walk out, but she didn’t know how long this head start would last and she couldn’t afford to assume the best.

She pulled over first chance she got into a cheap clothing store. She bought herself something a bit more incognito than her stealth suit, a burner phone, more petty cash, a knife, and stole a new car from the lot. Knowing Stark, and most people these days, he could track the car. As long as the government didn’t know who’s car she had, the tracking wouldn’t be an issue.

At the first red light she hit, she chewed the plastic off of the phone’s industrial strength packaging. She managed to activate it before the light changed and stole her attention. She dialed Clint’s number then quickly hung up before the call was placed. He’d always been her fallback but she couldn’t be sure Steve had even returned him. Even if he had, Clint had suffered enough. He didn’t need Natasha falling back into his and his family’s lap to disrupt things again, that was of course if he was even out of prison. She’d chosen the wrong side and this was hers to bear, hers and hers alone.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

She teased the edges of New York City. Going in was suicide given the lack of movement and the limited space to escape. She still hadn’t thought up a destination and the more she drove aimlessly the further away her mind got from a solution.

The sign directing traffic to a detour into New Jersey looked tempting. Last time she was in Jersey she was nearly blown up by a computerized version of Zola, the sickest Hydra agent’s she’d ever read up on. That was saying something considering she’d read up on them all. Steve had been so intensely, palpably angry and upset to lay eyes on that man again. It was understandable considering what he’d done to Steve’s friend.

That night had proven something to Natasha. That Steve wasn’t a fair-weather friend, that his loyalty and his sense of self were one and the same. Betraying that loyalty wasn’t something she took lightly and it wasn’t even something she committed to. Keeping T’challa off their tail had helped them to an extent and she hoped it would be enough for Steve to forgive her. Even if she could find this sanctuary Steve’d made for himself and Barnes, there was still a chance he wouldn’t want her there and she’d be back at square one.

The phone buzzed. Natasha had used her fair share of burners in her life and never once got a wrong number. Given that she hadn’t had the phone long enough to share the number, it was unnerving to hear it buzzing in the cupholder. Instinct told her not to answer and to ditch the phone and car. But her weariness brought on by the previous few days wanted to know who was on the other side. She knew how long it took to track a call, so she answered it. If it was Ross on the other end of the line she could flip the phone shut and alter her already-malleable course.

“Hello?”

“Agent Romanoff?” said an even voice on the other end.

“What?” snapped Natasha. Thirty more seconds until the tracker would identify what state she was in. Another minute for the city.

“Do me a favor. Take the next exit and pull into the first Shell station you see on the off-roads.”

“Who’s this?”

“It’s Agent Carter.”

“Sharon?” said Natasha. Her guards fell. Sharon was trustworthy no matter who’s side she was on. “How’d you get this number?”

“You’re good but you’re not that good. Pick me up and I’ll explain on the way.”

The line went dead before Natasha could rebut and say that, yes, she was that good. The next exit advertised a Shell station and a local doughnut shop. She pulled onto the off ramp and directly into the Shell station. She needed to refuel anyway so she stepped out and checked over each shoulder for Sharon. If she didn’t know better, she would’ve assumed the gas station was abandoned.

The gas pumped at a rate slower than molasses but it gave Natasha a few minutes to try and spot Sharon among the dirt-colored vista. There weren’t many places for her to hide, no trees, no hills, just dust and the gas station.

A bell chirped and brought Natasha’s attention to the door opening. There was Sharon looking as clean-pressed as ever with her arms full of cheap food. Her expression was hard to gauge since most of it was hidden beneath her sunglasses. At the very least, she didn’t seem mad.

“Open the door,” said Sharon as she approached the car. Natasha swung open the passenger’s side and Sharon hopped in. “You almost full up?”

“What?” Sharon gestured to the gas pump. “Oh, yeah almost. Um—why—“

“Not out here, let’s get on the road and then I’ll explain, okay?”

She shut her door. A strange thump signaled the gas tank was full. Natasha hung the pump back up and hurried over to the driver’s side. She turned the key in the ignition, put her foot on the break, and Sharon put it in drive.

“I can do that myself, thanks,” spat Natasha. She floored it out of the gas station and got right back on the highway. She still had no destination in mind but had a sneaking suspicion that Sharon did.

“Powdered sugar doughnut?” Sharon reached a hand out with two doughnuts. Natasha was wearing mostly dark colors if not black but she couldn’t resist and took both.

“Are you gonna tell me what the hell’s going on?” muffled Natasha through her doughnuts.

“I heard about you, about what you did last week.”

“Is that privileged information?” Stark had given her the impression that the entirety of the US Government was breathing down her neck. “I thought I was the talk of the town.”

“To CIA agents you are.”

“What do you mean ’to CIA agents’, you’re a CIA agent.”

“I made the same call as you,” said Sharon. Natasha turned briefly to look at her. She stared straight ahead at the highway, a doughnut around her finger.

“How? I didn’t know you were involved except for the cleanup in Vienna.”

“I’ve always had a…soft spot for Rogers. I grew up with him basically.”

“Yeah in the same way you grow up with cartoon characters,” teased Natasha.

“I tipped him off. Told him where Barnes was hiding. I knew he needed to get there before we did and…It’s not treason if you’re giving secrets to Captain _America_ ,” laughed Sharon. She polished off another mini doughnut.

“It was you!” laughed Natasha. “We were all wondering how Steve found him so quick. I assumed he went rogue and broke into a few files or something but…”

“The whole thing,” sighed Sharon as she offered the bag of doughnuts to Natasha who took them, “the whole thing was wrong. At the time I still thought Barnes was culpable for the bombing but…it didn’t feel right. Steve should’ve always been the one to get him, not a bunch of trigger happy agents.”

“Is this your passive aggressive way of telling me I chose the wrong side?”

Sharon laughed. “No. Not at all. You did, obviously, but…There’s no way you could’ve known how it would turn out. Tony recruiting a child might’ve been a tip but still.”

“I made the right call in the end,” said Natasha too forcefully.

“I know.”

“You were the one that gave them their toys back too, I assume?”

Sharon nodded. “It wasn’t a fair fight to send them off against a big metal set of cowards without even a shield.”

“Well who ratted you out to the CIA?”

“It’s no mystery. Rogers is with me for a funeral and magically discovered Barnes’s location. Rogers is in the same room as me when the power goes out and magically knows what wing of the building Barnes is being kept in. I disappear for an afternoon and the whole gang’s armor gets returned to them.”

“So they exiled you?”

“Not yet,” replied Sharon. She snatched the bag of doughnuts from Natasha. “Like you, I wanted to get a head start before they came for me.”

“How’d you find me then?”

“I’m in the CIA, Natasha. I have my ways. Namely the necklace I got you for Christmas two years ago.”

“You track me?!” said Natasha. Suddenly the necklace she wore daily started to burn her skin. “You gave me this because I lost the one Clint gave me and needed a replica! This was the first friendly gesture ever you gestured towards me and it’s a fuckin’ tracker!”

“I was under orders at the time to keep an eye on you. S.H.I.E.L.D. had just collapsed and the CIA wasn’t too excited to be endorsing the woman who aired all of the dirty laundry. Also you didn’t lose the original, I stole it from you and put the tracker on it and gave it back as a Christmas gift.”

“You’re such a bitch,” muttered Natasha.

“I disabled it.”

“Oh,” said Natasha, hoping she hadn’t overreacted. “When?”

“Two weeks after I gave it to you. You were going to such boring places, I convinced the CIA was wasting money and that I could handle you myself.”

“They trusted you with that?”

“Well,” Sharon shrugged. “It was more like they knew better. You did what you did for a very specific reason and you and Steve both reported to the CIA immediately. They trusted you.”

“That’s their fault,” said Natasha. She didn’t feel guilty, persay. She’d done her best to help the CIA after the fall of SHIELD but her loyalty still lied with individuals and herself far more than it ever would with a government agency.

“I trusted you too,” said Sharon, staring straight ahead.

“You can’t judge me for switching to the rogue side when you practically created it. I may have let them get away on that jet but you gave them the keys—“

“I trusted you and you proved me right. You did the right thing in the end. You let two innocent men go free. I don’t care what those stupid Accords say, you did what was right.”

“Stupid Accords?” teased Natasha.

“A system of checks and balances is probably good for Stark, but the rest of you never needed it. In fact, I was surprised when you signed.”

“I like it here,” said Natasha. “I was ready to commit to a new country.”

Sharon grinned. “See how long that lasted?” Natasha clenched her jaw as Sharon laughed. “It’s a joke, Romanoff. You’re still as American as apple pie, just in your own way. That’s how us natives do it, too.”

“Very funny.”

“So what’s the plan exactly?”

“I thought I would drive,” said Natasha.

“Where?”

“I didn’t get that far. Feel free to jump in with ideas, the floor is open.”

“Damn Romanoff, you drive like an old lady,” groaned Sharon.

“I’m going seventy.”

“Yeah, the speed limit.”

“Would you rather I went eighty, got pulled over, and got us both caught?” spat Natasha.

“Can we compromise at seventy-five?”

Natasha sped up just a bit and Sharon grinned a wide earnest grin that Natasha couldn’t help but mimic.

“So, where should we go?” asked Natasha.

“I got a few ideas, none of which I’m sure about, one of which I think is our only real shot.”

“Spill.”

“Let’s find somewhere to stop for the night.”

“It’s seven, the sun’s not even down yet you geriatric idiot,” said Natasha. She was used to mean-but-loving name-calling with Steve and Sam, but she didn’t know Sharon nearly as well and regretting calling her an idiot almost immediately.

“Once the sun goes down our options dwindle, you ginger asshole.”

“Ginger? _Real original_ ,” laughed Natasha. “So what’re you too good for a motel on the side of the road?”

“ _Think_ , Romanoff. If you’re going on the run where is the last place you’ll stop for a night?” Sharon’s eyes bored into Natasha.

“I don’t know just fuckin’ tell me.”

“A five star resort! No sane person would stay at some lavish luxurious hotel if they think the cops are right behind them, or in our case, the agents.”

“True,” began Natasha hesitantly, “but that’s for a reason. No hotel lets you pay in cash and they’ve got real computer systems, security systems that can track us and everything—“

“We go in. We’re two very important business women with no time to explain why we must have a room. We use the credit card I swiped, everyone thinks that my wealthy beyond belief husband whose name is on the card is paying for our room. If and when the card is found to be stolen, we’re already gone and onto the next one. Sure, the hotel’s cameras will have footage of us, but what does that matter, our identities aren’t secrets. And this way we get a jacuzzi tub.”

“That does sound nice.” Natasha’s mind drifted to images of herself in a jacuzzi tub big enough for three, candles surrounding her, bubbles nearly drowning her, and an over-filled glass of wine in her hand. “I think we should get some disguises though, just to err on the side of caution.”

“Do we have time for an 80s montage of clothes-buying to find these disguises?”

“I bet we do. There’s a Macy’s at the next exit.”

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Before they hit Macy’s they stopped for hair dye. They only had enough money for the cheap stuff that was supposed to wash out. Sharon, being blonde, already knew it was going to leave her hair a weird dingy yellow if it ever washed out and frankly Natasha couldn’t wait to see that. They locked themselves in one of the mall’s bathrooms and set to work on their hair. Natasha’s hair would only accept black dye without being bleached, so Sharon got the brunette bottle.

“Shouldn’t we cut it too?” Natasha slathered her roots with the black dye.

“We could but I think this’ll cover us, and it’s way less to clean up.”

Natasha stared at the black dye droplets filling the sink in front of her. “Is it?”

“Okay, we’ve gotta leave it for thirty minutes before rinsing it out.”

“What should we do for half an hour?”

Sharon shrugged. “You got a life story you’re eager to tell me?”

“Not particularly. You?”

Sharon shook her head in response.

“While we’re trapped together like this, can I ask you a personal question?” Sharon smirked and nodded. “What’s the deal with you and Steve?”

Sharon adjusted her position against the wall uncomfortably. “Listen if I’m stepping on your toes with him or something—“

“Ew, no. That’s not it,” interrupted Natasha. She didn’t want that train of thought to leave the station. “I just know how attached he was to Peggy and it seemed impossible that he’d ever move on from that but…he’s taken a shine to you hasn’t he?”

“Eh,” said Sharon with an uncomfortable laugh. “I think maybe if…certain things had been different we could’ve really taken off but…certain things happened and certain things can’t be changed for worse or for better.”

“Why so cryptic?” said Natasha, encroaching on Sharon’s space just a little.

“There’s certain things about him and me that are private, Romanoff,” said Sharon, not at all intimidated by Natasha’s stare-down. She hadn’t expected she would be all that scared considering she was just as dangerous as Natasha, and she was five inches taller.

“What’s so private that he wouldn’t tell _me_?” The hurt in her voice was poorly disguised. She was Steve’s best friend, bar Sam. There was nothing on earth that Sharon had the right to know about him before she did. That had always been a point of contention between the two of them. They knew each other through Steve and when they were all together the interaction she and Sharon had felt like they were asserting dominance as the alpha female of the Avengers group.

“It’s not so much private…It was just a trick of circumstance and I learned something and he learned something about me. None of it’s a big deal though, he’s not dying and neither am I.”

“Whatever.” Natasha crossed her arms and leant against the wall.

“Are you pouting?”

“No,” snapped Natasha, while she pouted.

“Alright, to make it even, I wanna ask a personal question about you.”

“I won’t answer.”

“I’ll still ask. You know Barnes right?”

“Obviously—“

“I mean before all of this. You’ve known him for a while haven’t you?” said Sharon. Natasha had had this asked of her more than once. After the Winter Soldier got lost in the shuffle, everyone was accusing her of harboring him somewhere because they presumably had a shared past. Of course, once it came out that the Winter Soldier and James Barnes were one and the same, the CIA stopped hounding her and started hounding Steve.

“Not really,” said Natasha.

“Our records show you were trained together. Neither you or Barnes have opened up about that.”

“You wearin’ a wire, Carter?”

Sharon lifted her shirt to prove she wasn’t. “You gonna answer me or not?”

“It’s not a big deal really, I just don’t like talkin’ about it.”

“Will you?”

Natasha sighed and slid down the wall to sit on the floor. “He’s not an agent like I was, he was purely a weapon and they treated him like one. I was trained with other girls hundreds of miles from the compound they kept him locked up in. The only things I knew about him were the horror stories our handlers used to tell us about what they did to him—they said they’d do it to us if we didn’t behave.”

“So you never met before?”

“We did. When I was older, I sparred with him for a few months, they wanted to see who would win. I tried to talk to him but he was so far gone, no one was in his body.”

“So you two never…”

“Never what?”

“Became anything?”

Natasha looked up at her. “Do you really think I had time for _that_ while I was in there?”

“Personally I don’t, but the CIA’s convinced.”

“Well they’re wrong about almost everything in my file so I’m not really surprised.”

Natasha stared at the floor tiles in front of her. Her mind unwillingly flashed back to those days. That’s all she ever got now, was short flashes of memories she thought she’d cut out of her head. But sometimes, when she got too inside her own head, they’d all come flooding back in a horrible slideshow.

Sharon’s hand grabbed her wrist. She hadn’t even noticed Sharon had sat down beside her. “Sorry I made you talk about it. Curiosity got the better of me.”

“It was a fair trade,” replied Natasha after a beat of uncertainty. “Why’re you curious about that if not to report back to the CIA, anyway?”

“I don’t know…I’ve known you for awhile but there’re big chunks of you I feel like I can’t even ask about…I just took the opportunity I guess.”

They stayed there in silence for a few minutes, then spent the remainder of their dye time playing twenty questions. It got Natasha’s mind out of the snow and kept them entertained long enough.

Rinsing their hair in the sinks was no easy feat considering the incredibly small basins and weak water pressure. It took Natasha just a bit longer to get it done considering her hair was thicker. When Natasha came up for air she got a glimpse of Sharon’s hair.

“You look good brunette,” said Natasha.

“You look good…black…head?” replied Sharon. Natasha bursted out laughing. “What the hell’s the word for black hair?”

“It’s brunette too,” wheezed Natasha. “But I think blackhead is gonna catch on.”

The two of them sat under the hand dryers for another few minutes to get their hair at least half dry. Once that was done they were off to wander the mall in search of Macy’s.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Sharon said that they needed to come off high-class if they wanted a last-minute room. Natasha reminded her that anyone high class wouldn’t shop at any store in a mall. Sharon shut her up and shoved her into a dressing room with various pieces off the clearance rack.

“What’re you gonna wear?” asked Natasha through the changing room door. The skirt she was attempting to hike up wouldn’t go past her hips.

“I already bought what I want while I was wrangling together more clothes for you. I’m already dressed and everything,” replied Sharon.

“Seriously?! Why can’t you find me anything decent?”

“Let me in, I’m gonna dress you myself,” snapped Sharon.

“No!”

“Yes!” The door opened. Natasha hadn’t been watching and had no idea how she unlocked it. At first she assumed it was some CIA lockpicking course, but then she remembered she was in a shitty Macy’s dressing room and the lock probably unlocked itself.

“Sharon!” screeched Natasha, reaching for a blouse to cover herself with. Sharon rolled her eyes.

“We don’t have time for modesty! Stop screaming and put some of this stuff on!”

“I can do it myself!”

“Oh yeah?! Then why’s this skirt not on!”

“It doesn’t fit!”

Sharon took that as a challenge. Her thumbs slipped into the skirt while her fingers curled around the sides. She practically hoisted Natasha off the ground in her attempts to get it up past her hips.

“Agent Carter! It doesn’t fuckin’ fit!” Natasha had just finished the sentence when the fabric gave way and slid past her hips.

“I told you so,” said Sharon with a wink. “And it looks good. Just wear it out, I don’t wanna try and get it off just to pay for it. Now gimme that blouse.”

Natasha obediently handed it over to her and didn’t fight as Sharon buttoned it up for her. Her fingers would brush small patches of Natasha’s skin each time she got a handle on a button and it’s buttonhole. The higher up she went the shallower Natasha’s breathing became. As she came to the last two buttons, her hand lingers and pressed just below her collarbone, her gaze never left Natasha’s chest.

“My eyes are up here,” joked Natasha with a nervous voice.

“I think we leave this a little unbuttoned.” Sharon’s voice was so analytical and detached, as if staring at Natasha’s chest was equal to staring at her taxes. “I think if we give the clerks at the hotel a little eye candy they’ll be happier to help.”

“You’re pimping me out?” laughed Natasha.

“Just for one hotel room,” replied Sharon with an equal laugh. “You do look good in that though, maybe you should give up being an Avenger and become a CEO of…something.”

“I didn’t choose my career based on the outfit.”

“Right, sorry. That’s not what I meant.”

“Are you trying to compliment me, Sharon?” Natasha couldn’t help but smile when Sharon’s eye roll was accompanied by a very slight blush.

“Shut up, Romanoff. I was _trying_ to be nice.”

“Have you ever done it before?”

“We live in a man’s world, we do a man’s job. I don’t have very many female friends lying around for me to practice my compliments on.”

“Then I’m glad I met you all that time ago because that was an atrocious compliment job.”

“Just—“ stammered Sharon, “let’s just pay and go, we’re in a hurry.”

“We wouldn’t be in a hurry if we stayed at a motel—“

“I’ve been sleeping in a garage for two days, I want to take a long hot bath, is that a crime?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“ _I_ wanted to take a bath.”

Sharon smirked and picked up the clothes Natasha had been wearing before leading the two of them out of the dressing rooms. They paid with the cash Sharon had stocked up in her wallet. She was clearly more prepared than Natasha who only had maybe a hundred bucks on her. Natasha handed her clothes’ tags over to the cashier for her to can, they picked up two pairs of sunglasses at the register, and they were back to the car Natasha had stolen.

“You drive.” Natasha shoved her way past Sharon to beat her to the passenger side door. “This skirt’s really inhibiting leg movement.”

“Fine, I’m a better driver anyway,” replied Sharon. Before she could make her way around the car a bullet went through the windshield. “Shit.”

Two more followed. One through the windshield again, the other through the tire. The two of them took a few seconds to react, then sprinted towards the parking garage that stood at the end of the lot they’d parked in.

“Hurry up, Romanoff!” screamed Sharon as the gunfire got closer and closer.

“It’s the fuckin’ skirt!” It was a halfsize too small which would’ve been fine had the skirt’s design not already been so constricting. Another shot rang out and took down Natasha. She flubbed onto the asphalt. Sharon was mere feet in front of her, shooting in the direction the bullet must’ve come from. Once she unloaded a full clip, she rushed to Natasha’s side and hoisted her up onto her feet.

“You’re fine,” said Sharon. She dragged the two of them into the relative safety of the parking garage and stood Natasha up against the first car they saw. “This’ll have to do—“

“Hey!” shouted a man on the far side of the garage. “Hey, that’s my fuckin’ car!”

Sharon pulled her badge. “CIA, I need this car!”

“Wh—CIA?” said the man as he caught up to them and his car. “What the hell do you mean CIA?”

“Give me the damn keys,” snapped Sharon.

“Oh shit—is she shot?!” said the man, his eyes locked on Natasha’s calf. Natasha wanted to sit down and nurse her leg, she didn’t have the patience Sharon did. While the man admired her leg wound, she snatched his wrist and grabbed the keys, handing them off to Sharon.

“You can’t just take my fuckin’ car. I read somewhere that it’s a myth.”

“We’re going to,” said Natasha. Sharon opened the passenger door and she fell in.

“I’ll call the cops—“

“We _are_ the cops, jackass!”

Sharon tried not to laugh at that while she turned the ignition. The tires screeched but Sharon kept her foot firmly on the gas. Natasha waited until they had stop slipping and sliding around the tedious backroads before she inspected her leg. It was just a graze, it didn’t look to deep either. Sharon pulled back onto the highway and leant over to take a look herself.

“Sorry,” said Natasha.

“If you weren’t wearing that straight jacket, you would’ve been fine. It’s my fault.”

“CIA right?” asked Natasha. Sharon nodded. “Well, aren’t they supposed to arrest us first?”

“They must have orders to shoot on sight. It’s a compliment to how dangerous they think we are.”

“How’d they know it was us?” said Natasha.

“Guess they’re tailing us a little better than we thought. Get napkins or something out of the glovebox, you can’t just let that thing bleed.”

“So we dyed our hair for nothing,” sighed Natasha with a black lock of hair wrapped around her finger.

“Oh well, it looks good.”

Sunlight blinded the two of them as night creeped dangerously close. Sharon promised that her mental map was far superior to google maps, which they couldn’t use without be traced anyway. Natasha had no choice but to believe her. But, as promised, they hit the next city. Natasha had driven through a barren wasteland where she picked up Sharon, through to strip-mall territory where they bought their new clothes, and into a downtown area that Sharon was inexplicably giving herself credit for finding.

“I told you we’d hit something.”

“Yeah, because I got us on the right highway, all you had to do was drive straight,” replied Natasha.

“Whatever. We’re here.”

 

~~~~~~~~~~

 

Thirty minutes of exploring downtown Philadelphia led to their eventual discovery of a hotel. It was a tall, lanky building lined with blue lights, flanked by two fountains, and not at all crowded. Sharon circled the block while Natasha cleaned up the blood she’d got on the tan leather seats. She accepted that most of it just wasn’t going to come out but she had to make herself presentable for when they walked in. Sharon pulled up and handed the keys off to the valet. She circled the car to help Natasha out and confidently escorted her inside. Natasha could feel all eyes on her bloody leg but no one said a word.

Natasha limped up to the front desk with Sharon and leant against it to get the pressure off of her leg. Sharon flipped her hair a few times in an attempt to distract the man behind the desk from the semi-side-show Natasha had made herself in the short journey from revolving door to check-in desk.

“We’d like a room please, just for zee night,” said Sharon in a french accent. Though initially confused, Natasha figured why the hell not and went along with it.

“No reservation?” asked the man behind the desk.

“I’m sorry, we we’re just driving so long we wanted to rest for zee night,” said Sharon. Her heel just barely tapped Natasha’s shin, signaling for her to jump in in some way. The only joining in she needed to do was accentuate how tight her blouse was. Any words that might come out would just let on to how aware she was of her leg wound so it was best that she just fall to the lowest standard of distraction.

“Well,” began the man, clearly using all of his willpower to avoid looking anywhere south of Natasha’s neck, “I…”

“Surely you’re manager is able to geev us somesing,” said Sharon, batting her lashes shamelessly.

“I’m the manager,” replied the man, his eyes drifted downward ever so briefly. “I…You may have to pay a raised rate.”

“Zat eez fine.”

“Okay I’ve got on the twenty eighth floor,” said the man as he programmed the room keys. “Please enjoy your stay, checkout is tomorrow at noon.”

“Thank you so much,” said Sharon, absolutely fawning over the man.

Natasha linked her arm with Sharon’s as they maneuvered to the elevators. Her skirt was still keeping her legs in a vice and there was very little she could do to make her steps seem natural. That paired with the wound made it impossible. They rode up to their floor with another couple in complete silence. A silence that only broke when Natasha unlocked their room and waddled in.

“Good Lord, get this fuckin’ thing off of me!” The zipper unzipping made absolutely no difference in the intensity of the vice the skirt had become. Sharon suppressed a laugh while she shook her jacket off.

“You did wonderfully!”

“I didn’t do anything,” replied Natasha.

“Eye candy’s worth more than people give credit.”

“Nice french accent, did you learn that from the Pink Panther?”

“I can do a better french accent but I really thought that guy might not believe it if he heard the real thing,” said Sharon. She threw her bag on the loveseat next to Natasha’s.

“I don’t get it. Does he really think that booking a room for us is gonna make us fall madly in love with him?” laughed Natasha.

“Do you mean to tell me you _didn’t_ fall head over heels for him?” joked Sharon. 

The room was expansive and ornate. Complete with a balcony overlooking a block park. Natasha meandered to it, briefly pulling the curtains back and looking down onto the street below. The building directly across was a pitch-black office. An empty office meant whoever was on their tail could just waltz in and have a perfect vantage point. She backed away from the window and made to close the curtains up but was interrupted by Sharon.

“Oh and look! Jacuzzi tub!” called Sharon from the bathroom. Seconds later, Natasha heard the water running. She waddled off the balcony and closed the curtains up. “Do you want the first bath?”

“No, I should wait until it scabs over a little bit,” said Natasha.

“I’ve got some stuff in my bag, lemme bandage it or disinfect it at least.” Sharon dug through her bag while Natasha got comfortable on the loveseat next to it. She held the bottle of antiseptic above her head triumphantly and began dabbing it on Natasha’s leg with one of the washcloths from the bathroom. “Hurt?”

“A little.”

“It’s not bleeding anymore. It wasn’t too deep.”

“You got any bandages in there?”

“Mhm, but I’ll do that after you’re in and out of the shower, no point putting them on just to get ‘em wet. You sure you don’t want the first bath?” asked Sharon again.

“I’m sure, go ahead.”

“Alright, only if you’re sure.” Sharon capped the antiseptic and shut the door to the bathroom. Natasha held the washcloth against her leg for a few more seconds. The curtains hadn’t closed quite all the way so she stood to close them. Or tried to at least, she forgot how tight the skirt was and underestimated how tough it would be to stand in it.

“Before you get in, will you peel this skirt off of me?” plead Natasha.

“Ugh, yeah hang on.”

Sharon emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her.

“Oh if you’re already—”

“It’s fine. Okay do you think we should try and get it all the way up and off or back down and off?” asked Sharon with a few preliminary tugs to the fabric.

“Wouldn’t down be easier?”

“Maybe…you don’t have very wide shoulders though.”

“Just go down,” groaned Natasha. Sharon tugged and tugged making very little headway each time. Finally she got on her knees and tugged with all she was worth and the skirt slid off. It was enough jostling for her towel to slide right off with it. Sharon made a sort of ‘oop’ sound before everything was covered up instantly. Natasha hadn’t really been able to see much from her vantage point of towering over Sharon. “I didn’t see anything.”

Sharon laughed. “It’s not the end of the world if you did. I’ll be out quick and I won’t use all the hot water.”

She disappeared into the bathroom again. Natasha fell back onto the bed. She unbuttoned her blouse and her hand found it’sway to her necklace as it often did. Clint had first gifted it to her to commemorate the one-month anniversary of their first mission together. It wasn’t really ‘together’ though. Clint had been ordered to find and eliminate her. He found her and a lot of worse enemies. She helped him fight his way out of it. She was granted immunity in exchange. It never left her neck, not once. It made her wonder how Sharon had stolen it from her in the first place.

It was possible that Sharon was a better agent, not likely but possible. Swiping something off someone’s neck wasn’t easy, especially when that someone was Natasha. Maybe she was drunk and among friends at the time, maybe Sharon swiped it while Natasha slept.

It was strange to think that the necklace had made them friends in a way. The day she admitted to herself that she’d never find the necklace she went searching for a replacement. The only Avenger who knew about jewelry was Tony and he would’ve blabbed to Clint immediately and told him she lost the necklace. So she asked Sharon who shrugged and said she’d keep an eye out. Two weeks later she received her first Christmas gift from Sharon. It was the only time they’d really connected, well before their impromptu road trip. It almost tainted the memory of that budding friendship to know how coordinated and intentional it had all been. Almost

Their friendship hadn’t really run deep but they were talking whenever they were together for whatever reason. They liked each other in a way that suggested if they could just be together for longer, if Sharon wasn’t always being called away, if Natasha didn’t always have someone to save, they’d become very close. The only missing ingredient between the two of them that made a deep friendship with a woman, the kind of relationship Natasha craved, was time together. Natasha wasn’t really willing to throw away what she had with Sharon over a stupid tracker necklace. No matter how weird it sounded on paper.

“It’s all yours,” said Sharon. She shivered her way across the room, wet hair glued to her bare back. Most of the brown had washed out. Her blonde hair was showing through in horrible streaks.

“Your hair,” said Natasha.

“Yours is gonna be worse, shut up,” laughed Sharon. Natasha shuffled into the bathroom and shut the door.

The bath didn’t feel nearly as relaxing as she’d hoped. The water was hot enough and the tub was big enough but it didn’t erase her very prominent problems. Every department of the U.S. government was tailing her, her and Sharon. She had no idea how close that tail was, how long she had before her freedom was ripped from her, no idea where to go.

No amount of soaking in a tub could quell those worries in the slightest.

She washed her hair and most of the dye filled the tub. After her third scrub she decided that any dye still in her hair was going to stay there. The tub drained and so did the murky black water. Her wet feet slid in short bursts across the slick tile on her way to inspect her hair and it’s new color in the mirror. It was mostly just in the underside of her hair, most of it was back to it’s original red, though a noticeable bit duller. She got the towel around herself as tight as it would go before stepping out into the room and hurrying to her bag to find something to wear.

“Wanna rent a movie?” asked Sharon. She was laid out on the bed eating something from the minibar with the remote in her hand and Kung Fu Panda ready to rent on the TV.

“Nah, I wanna sleep.” Natasha groaned and thumbed through the items in her bag one more time, as if she was waiting for clothes to appear. “Did you by any chance pack extra pajamas?”

“Wear one of the complimentary robes, they’re the same as.”

“Ew, no they’re not. Do you know how many people have worn those things.”

“Stop being such a priss.”

She had no other option so she reluctantly draped the other complimentary robe around herself. It wasn’t the same as pajamas, it was better. The robe was like being enveloped in a cloud but she had far too much pride to let that show on her face and when asked if she liked it she replied, “I’ve had better.”

Sharon rolled her eyes and slinked off the bed to tend to Natasha’s leg. She dabbed it a few more times with the antiseptic before wrapping it in a bandage. “Not too tight?”

“No, it’s good…thanks,” said Natasha. She jumped up and returned to her half of the bed that she’d claimed already.

“Alright, well, now that we’re alone for sure let’s go over our options.” Sharon patted the bed as a prompt for Natasha to join her on it. “I told you we’ve got three, none are realistic but one might actually work.”

“Yeah, yeah. Cut the suspense.”

“Option 1: We create our own special form of the WPP and camp out in Oklahoma somewhere for the rest of our lives.”

“Option 2?”

“Go back to the CIA, beg for forgiveness, spend 30 plus years in a federal prison.”

“And option 3?”

“We find Steve.”

“What?”

“Think about it, Romanoff. The CIA can’t locate Steve or Barnes. They’re really off the grid. Wherever they are is a safehouse, the safest safehouse.”

Natasha sighed. “If the CIA can’t find them, what makes you think we can?”

“I’ve got footage no one at the CIA does. It’s given me an enormous clue.”

“What footage?” said Natasha. It was the first question to come out but definitely not the only one she had. How had she kept it from the CIA, how had she gotten it in the first place, what was incriminating enough to hint at their escape plan.

“Footage of the fight between the two of them and Tony.”

“Tony already told us what—“

“Not the fight so much as the aftermath. Did Tony tell you T’challa was there?” said Sharon. Natasha steeled.

“No…”

“Because he didn’t know. The mystery man who handcuffed Zemo for Tony to bring in wasn’t Steve, it was T’challa.”

“What? But T’challa reported to Ross the next day, why didn’t he mention all—or any of this?”

“Guess it didn’t matter to him by then.”

“Can I see the footage myself?"

“Do you have a computer for me to plug the USB into? ‘Cause otherwise I can’t show it to you,” replied Sharon.

“Hotels like this have computer labs, come on,” said Natasha jumping to her feet. She wouldn’t say it but she had hoped Steve would get her. She didn’t expect it but she wanted it. After what she did for him and his friend she thought he might reciprocate and get her to a safehouse too. For some reason, she had a gut feeling that watching the tape of him leaving would explain why he hadn’t come for her.

“Let me just tell you what’s on there. Steve and Barnes met T’challa at the entrance, they found him and Zemo. There’s no audio but T’challa didn’t attack and neither did Steve. They got into a jet with him.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“I wanna see it still.” Natasha started putting on her shoes and her Sharon mutter to herself behind her. But after the muttering, she joined Natasha in putting her shoes on and the pair of them wandered down to the elevators and down to the floor with the lab. It was empty, probably because most guests would’ve brought their own computers. It looked like the first use the lab had gotten in months. To be safe, Natasha ripped the ethernet cable from the back of the computer before Sharon put the USB in.

“It’s the only file on there,” said Sharon.

“Is it encrypted?”

“No, I didn’t have the time. This is the only copy of the footage so there’s no way anyone could get to it anyway.”

She clicked and loaded up the video. Just as Sharon said. The footage was shot from the outside of the compound. Natasha had never been held in that compound exactly but she’d been held in a few very similar and knew what it was immediately. The footage opened on T’challa chaining Zemo up and tossing what looked like a pistol off screen. Then Steve came out with Barnes around him.

“He’s missing—“ Natasha paused the video, “He’s missing his arm.”

“Yeah he is,” said Sharon.

“Stark didn’t mentioned—“

“Stark didn’t mention a lot, and blowing off his arm was one of those things. There’s nothing else that could’ve done it but a blast from his suit. The rubble falling wouldn’t have made such a clean break and Tony would’ve had no reason to keep it secret if it wasn’t him.

“So…where’s his arm? Doesn’t he need that?”

“Well, Tony turned the shield from Steve in but no word on the arm. It’s probably useless now. That’s a lot of damage to repair on a 70 year old prosthetic. Stop pausing it, I feel like a sitting duck in here,” said Sharon. She checked over her shoulder yet again, and yet again no one was joining them.

The video continued. As Sharon had said, T’challa, Steve, and Bucky were locked in conversation for a full minute before T’challa gestured to the plane he’d used to get there presumably. Steve thanked him and helped Bucky towards it off screen. From there T’challa hesitated for a few moments before joining them in the plane. Only a bit of the jet was visible, just enough to tell when it had taken off.

“Alright, you’ve seen it, lets go back to the room.”

Natasha was silent for the journey back. It didn’t make sense, Steve had given up his mantle as Captain America, not his morals. How could he leave them all in the lurch. Natasha was in dire straights but Wilson, Wanda, Clint, and Lang were in prison and he was just letting that happen.

“So,” began Sharon once safely inside their room again, “he’s with T’challa. The two of them are. T’challa, according to our sources, is back in Wakanda. There’s a chance he just dropped them off somewhere but either way T’challa helped them and he might help us.”

“You—You’re not seriously suggesting we try and fly to Wakanda. You realize how many people are out there after our asses? We couldn’t even make it out of Macy’s without getting shot at, do you really think we’ll be able to take a plane to _Wakanda_?!”

“I know of a quinjet,” said Sharon quietly.

“You do?” prompted Natasha.

“I do. A plane all to ourselves.”

“Where is it?”

“The governor of Virginia.”

“What?” said Natasha with a confused whine.

“He has a private airport wherein the CIA stores one of our quinjets. The same way we had one stored in that civilian airport in Moscow,” said Sharon.

“Do you have the keys?” said Natasha in a mocking tone.

“That’s our one and only issue. That quinjet is practically off the market because of how inaccessible it is,” said Sharon, pacing the room. “I’ve only seen it used once and it was for maintenance. The governor has a really weirdly tight hold on that airstrip.”

“Why not just move the jet?”

“It’s a hassle and why not just leave it? At least, that’s how the CIA’s thinking about it.”

“So…What do we do?”

“I say,” Sharon planted her hands on Natasha’s shoulders firmly, “we crash the governor’s party, get permission to use the airstrip, fly to Wakanda, take it from there.”

“Since when do you ask permission?” Sharon’s eyes wouldn’t leave Natasha’s, she could feel her cheeks warming up and only hoped the room was too dark for Sharon to notice.

“Breaking in is hopeless. It’s private property that the CIA uses for storage, it’s under a very strict guard rotation that won’t lighten up without explicit permission from the governor.”

“How do we get to Virginia, then?”

“We can start by driving tomorrow. After that…take it as it comes I guess,” said Sharon. “Let’s get some sleep.”

They slid into bed together. Natasha curled up as she usually did and felt Sharon do the same right next to her. Sharon was asleep in an instant while Natasha was left staring at the ceiling. There was still a lot of things up in the air that Sharon wasn’t eager to nail down. Was the jet fueled up, could it get them to Wakanda even if it was, where in Wakanda could they land where the CIA wouldn’t be right behind them, how would they get an audience with the king. Eventually her worries put her to sleep.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

A creak woke her. It wasn’t loud but it was definitely in the room. Natasha gave Sharon one swift kick under the covers and she jolted awake. Neither could see through the dark but both could sense something was there, or someone. Natasha made a calm, slow shift towards the bedside lamp when a the horrible sound of something heavy making contact with Sharon’s head filled her ears. Sharon fell over and off of her side of the bed. The figure that had thrown the mystery object at Sharon froze for a moment and allowed Natasha a clear opportunity.

Natasha sprung up and started hitting the only other thing moving in the room. Whoever it was, was tall but not very weighty, easy to maneuver and take apart. A few hard punches to the stomach, a few upper cuts, a few swift kicks to the groin, and one broken nose later and the man was laid out on the floor, groaning in his unconsciousness.

“You okay, Sharon?” asked Natasha, her eyes never leaving the man on the floor.

“I’m fine,” grumbled Sharon as she pulled herself up off the floor. “I think he threw the little DVD player at my head.”

“Concussion?”

“No. Headache.”

“We’ve gotta move,” said Natasha. She bent down and examined the print on the man’s shirt, it was just barely visible in the darkness but it read CIA in white block letters. “He’s CIA.”

“Hotel’s probably flooded with agents, Romanoff.” Sharon rummaged through her bag somewhere behind Natasha who refused to take her eyes off the man sprawled on the floor.

“Can we scale the building?” asked Natasha.

“With what? And anyway they’ll just be waiting for us at the entrance. We’ve gotta get a little further,” said Sharon.

“How’re we gonna do that?” Natasha turned and saw Sharon with what looked like a harpoon in her arms.

“Zipline,” replied Sharon.

“Let me get dressed then.”

It took them both less than a minute to get on better clothes than the robes they’d been wearing. Natasha’s leg wound still throbbed when she pulled her leg through the pantleg but she could walk on it and that’s all she needed. Sharon threw the balcony doors open and shot the harpoon-like gun clear across the street into the building across from them. She secured the end she was holding into the drywall.

“Is that gonna hold both of us?” said Natasha as she raided the CIA agent for guns.

“It’s held much heavier than the two of us,” said Sharon. “Fuck, my head.”

Natasha put her new gun in her new holster and hurried to Sharon’s side. Sharon massaged her temples too harshly.

“Let me check your eyes,” said Natasha. It was difficult to see in just the residual moonlight and streetlight but her pupils were dilated. Unfortunately that was both a symptom of concussion and being in the dark. There was no way to tell which of those was causing it. “I’ll carry you.”

“Should I trust your grip that implicitly?” said Sharon with a hint of a smirk.

“You’re gonna have to. I don’t trust your vision or reflexes with that head injury,” said Natasha.

“I’m heavier than I look,” said Sharon.

“And I’m stronger than I look. Just hold on tight.”

There was a crash, the sound of a maid cart being turned over, down the hall. Lots of heavy footsteps followed. Natasha strapped what little essentials she had with her to some part of herself, Sharon did the same with her bag only pausing to hand Natasha the pulley.

Natasha swung it over the rope and got the most secure grip she could manage. Sharon boosted her up onto the balcony’s railing. The pair of them stood precariously on the edge of the railing. Though Natasha was holding onto the pulley that would carry her to the other side of the rope that threaded the buildings together. Sharon was holding onto nothing but faith.

“Grab me already, you’re makin’ me nervous just standing there with no life support,” said Natasha.

“Hang on,” said Sharon. She aimed the gun from hip straight into the window they were breaking through and fired three times to make their landing a little softer

The door to their hotel room collapsed under the pressure of a battering ram and agents flooded their room. Natasha counted the men, the guns, waiting for Sharon to grab hold. She was up to ten each by the time Sharon wrapped two arms around her neck and fell backwards off the balcony, dragging Natasha with her and propelling them into the building across the street. She was much, much heavier than she looked but not heavy enough to weaken Natasha’s grip.

“You’re about to hit!” warned Natasha as the two of them got closer and closer to the window they’d soon be smashing their way through.

“I’ve got it!”

She tucked her head as close to Natasha as she could, her body would be taking most of the heat on this one. It wasn’t the best time to notice but Sharon’s hair smelled like heaven. They used the same bottle of the same shampoo and yet Sharon’s hair was intoxicating. She might’ve told her had she not been interrupted by Sharon’s tense body crashing through the window on their behalves.

Natasha released the pulley and tumbled into the room. Sharon had already flown across most of it and was coughing and groaning against someone’s desk in the far corner.

“You okay?” said Natasha with her remaining strength. Sharon gave no response. Natasha’s muscles screamed when she begged them to lift her to her feet again but they complied. Shards of thick glass created a minefield for Natasha to navigate before landing on Sharon.

“Sharon? Sharon?” said Natasha. Her hands touched but were afraid to move or shake Sharon in any way.

“It was double paned,” replied Sharon.

“You didn’t hit your head on it right?” said Natasha. She instinctually checked Sharon’s eyes for a concussion again before remembering they were still in the dark, it was still night, it’d be impossible to be sure.

“I didn’t,” rasped Sharon.

“Alright, we gotta keep going.” Natasha held out a hand and pulled her to her feet. Sharon was taller, but Natasha was faster. As they ran through the halls looking for the stairwell to the building, Sharon lagged behind. It wasn’t by much but it was enough for Natasha to notice.

She found the stairwell and threw the door almost off it’s hinges. They jumped flight after flight until they found the maintenance exit into the alley behind the building. Stopping wasn’t an option and neither was planning on where to go. They ran straight ahead, deeper into the alley, both hoping that the other side was safe and both knowing it probably wasn’t.

When they emerged onto the main street they were down the block from the hotel. Natasha could see the SWAT teams outside the main exits waiting for them. Evidently, word hadn’t spread that they had exited the building they crash landed into. A calm escape was still possible. Sharon linked her arm with Natasha’s and they very calmly walked away from the commotion.

“Think they’ll see us?” said Sharon.

“Why ask me?” replied Natasha.

“You’ve been hunted by SHIELD before, you know more about this than I do.”

She would’ve basked in that compliment a bit longer had an SUV not skidded through a turn onto the street they were strolling down. She grabbed Sharon’s hand and yanked her forward. “Run!”

The car behind them turned it’s siren on and sped towards them. They had no chance of outrunning a car no matter how fast they were so Natasha pulled them into another alley that spit them out six odd blocks away from where they’d gone in. Sharon paused to catch her breath, Natasha tried to locate where the horrible, echoing sirens were originating from. Once she located the general area of the source, she grabbed Sharon and broke into a sprint again.

Alleys had fewer pedestrians but a much more limited range of sound. It was difficult to gauge if and when the cars would catch up to them in there but they traveled faster. Twenty blocks away, they stopped just short of leaving an alley and joining the rest of the pedestrians to catch their breath and think.

“We’ll never out run a car, Romanoff,” panted Sharon. “We need a new game plan.”

“We need a car,” said Natasha. “We need a distraction and a car.”

“What kind of distraction,” said Sharon. “The only things left in my bag are the first aid and a few guns.”

Natasha scanned their surrounding area, the sirens were still maybe a half mile away at most. No ideas jumped out at her. She panicked for a split second, worried she couldn’t work her way out of this. It took more effort than usual to get her brain to inundate her with escape routes and alternatives but she got there.

“Alright, I got it. One more sprint and we’re golden,” said Natasha. She sprinted across the street. She aimed for the parking lot directly across from them and hit her target in a few seconds. “Hotwire something!”

“Anything?!” replied Sharon.

“Anything! Go!” screamed Natasha across the parking lot. “Meet me in that car two blocks south of here! Go!”

Natasha continued scampering through the lines and rows of cars. Behind her came the sound of Sharon smashing a car window and eventually the sound of an engine starting. She watched Sharon drive off and away then, Natasha replicated those sounds for herself and hot wired the first heavy SUV she saw.

Her bag contained almost nothing useful and the thought that Sharon’s bag, Sharon’s more useful bag, was still strapped to Sharon’s chest where it could be of no use. But she found all she needed within the car itself. Namely the club across the steering wheel.

Unlocking a club was child’s play to an agent of Natasha’s caliber and took no more than a few seconds. It was so easy in fact she wondered if it would defend against a regular criminal either. She got the engine started and pulled out of the lot. Sharon was two blocks south, so Natasha drove four blocks north, towards the sirens.

For her plan to work all she needed was to make an appearance so she drove around the block a few times. The driver’s side window had been smashed through when she broke into it. Her red hair with a few stray black streaks was visible to the agents and officers trawling the streets in search of her. It didn’t take long for them to catch wind of her presence and for her to gain a small following. First it was two or three cars, then four or five, then she could clearly see the entire unit behind her. Just as she’d hoped. All hot on her trail, all trying to head her off and all failing.

Phase one, get all officers following her. Phase two, escape. She didn’t plan that phase out so much but it was coming to her, slowly but surely she was figuring it out. Her foot, which pressed the gas pedal firmly against the floor, was replaced by the club. She shoved it down and onto the accelerator and jimmied it against the seat, holding it firmly in place. Her next move was to the passenger’s seat. It took a little swerving but she managed it. Her only chance of escaping the car while leading the officers to believe she hadn’t was to make a tight turn and bail out of the car before the officers could replicate the turn.

A strange, uncommon rush of anxiety filled her when she spotted the corner she had to round. Nerves had never been enough to stop her but they certainly didn’t go unnoticed. She counted down the seconds until finally she turned the steering wheel for all it was worth and bailed. As she propelled herself from the passenger seat, she felt the car correcting itself. She was deep within the alley by the time the SUVs tailing her had made the turn. There were a few sets of tires Natasha could hear screeching and skidding out. It was a rough turn and she knew she’d be able to decommission a few of the cars that way.

Her feet carried her the fifteen blocks back to Sharon. The sirens got dimmer and dimmer. She’d rigged the car to stay at top speed and hoped that wherever it ended up without her was convincing, hoped that the agents and officers would think she was still inside and would waste time trying to extract her. She reached the block where she told Sharon to wait. Her lungs burned and her eyes scanned the poorly lit street in search of Sharon’s blonde-with-a-few-brown-streaks hair. Within seconds she was there.

Natasha jumped in without a word. Her lungs were too deprived of air for her to even dream of speaking. Sharon floored it without prompting and sped in the general direction of Virginia.

“What’d you do?” asked Sharon once they hit the main highway.

“Decoy,” wheezed Natasha. “Drive.”

“I am,” replied Sharon with a bit of a bite.

Natasha waited for her breathing to even out before she continued to assess the damages. The gun shot that grazed her leg certainly wasn’t thrilled about being jostled by the running but it wasn’t bleeding. Her shoulder and her hip were cut up from the glass she landed on the shattered glass. She knew that must have been nothing compared to Sharon.

“How’s your whole…situation?” said Natasha.

“I’ve got some glass in some places but we’ll deal with that once we’re out of the woods.”

“Where’re we going to next?”

Sharon was silent for a minute. Her thoughts were no doubt buzzing around in her brain, unfinished and unhelpful, just like Natasha. They needed to get to that jet, they needed to get off the ground and over international waters. But there was so much left before they could do that.

“We’ll take a train down to Virginia,” said Sharon.

“A train?”

“They’re not gonna be searching trains, we’ll take a train.”

“Well we need to stop somewhere for the night."

“What time is it anyway?” asked Sharon.

“It’s midnight. We got an hour of sleep.”

“It felt like an hour.”

“Let’s find a motel and work out the game plan there.”

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

It was another thirty minutes before they pulled off of the highway and into the parking lot of a motel. They paid for the rest of the night and hurried to their room to regroup. Sharon shoved the door open and threw her bag down on the floor between the two twin beds. Natasha did the same. She kicked her shoes off and hurried to collapse on the bed she claimed as hers.

As soon as her back hit the mattress she shot up in pain.

“You’ve gotta get the little shards out of my shoulder, I can’t sleep like this,” said Natasha. Sharon was already digging in her first aid kit for tweezers.

“Can you get your shirt off?”

It was a struggle, but Natasha managed. Sharon came up behind her and ran her hand down Natasha’s other shoulder and squeezed. “It’s not gonna feel good.”

“It’s not that deep, I’m a big girl.”

Natasha hoped Sharon hadn’t noticed how white her knuckles were as she gripped the cheap mattress underneath her. It was an issue of pride whether or not she let the pain show at this point and she was going to win come hell or high water.

“All done,” said Sharon. Natasha breathed a sigh of relief and promptly un-breathed it when Sharon doused her shoulder in antiseptic and set the whole thing on fire again.

“How’s it look, doc?” choked Natasha.

“It’s nothing to write home about. Let me do your hip and you can check my back.”

Natasha almost had to cut herself out of her pants, something tugged and cut further every time she tried to wriggle out of them. Once she finally succeeded in stripping down, Natasha laid on her side and Sharon knelt in front of the bed, her eyes were hawk-like in search of the microscopic shards. Being in such a state of undress and having the other person in the room hardly notice was not something Natasha had ever really experienced. There was a need in her to get Sharon to notice, to position this way or that so she’d see all she had in front of her.

“Okay, now do my back.” Sharon stood and pulled the shirt from her body in one quick motion. Natasha sat up and let Sharon sit. She took the tweezers from her and began poring over the cuts and scrapes along Sharon’s back that might’ve had glass in them. In the process, she noticed Sharon’s skin was smooth and even all around save for the stretch marks down her spine. The price of being tall, Natasha thought.

Her shoulders flexed and tensed when Natasha’s fingers ran over a particularly tender spot. Every muscle in her back was developed perfectly and they all moved with such fluidity, and tensed with such gusto and intensity. It was art. Natasha apologized outwardly but inwardly she wished there was a humane way to do it again.

Her fingers trailed over her spine and her other cuts and scrapes. There was nothing visible so she had to check if there was anything tangible. It felt like an eternity of sitting, tracing every inch of Sharon’s back. She looked like she was made of marble and Natasha couldn’t believe her eyes or her fingertips.

“Is…Is there any glass?” said Sharon after a few minutes of Natasha’s fingertips examining every square inch of her.

“Uh…” Natasha snatched her hand from Sharon’s back. “You’re all clear.”

“Thanks. Can you come check my arm though, I think there—“

“Yeah sure.” Natasha could feel the heat in her cheeks. Her limbs were wobbly when she awkwardly maneuvered herself to sit next to Sharon on the edge of the bed. Sharon laid her arm out for her and rested it on Natasha’s thighs. Where before Natasha was proud and confident in her state of undress, she was quite suddenly hyperaware and nervous about it. Her nerves showed in her bright red cheeks that Natasha was only able to conceal under the pretense of being very focused on pulling the glass from Sharon’s arm.

There were two or three shards but Natasha stretched that out. She needed a few more seconds to recover and regroup and drain her fucking face. Her imagination ran wild and gave her all of the possible outcomes of Sharon seeing Natasha’s bright red face. Alone it wasn’t too bad but after that strange, lingering massage Natasha had just executed, well there was good chance Sharon would get the wrong impression.

“Okay, that’s it,” said Natasha reluctantly.

“And my back’s fine too?” said Sharon off handedly.

“It’s perfect.” If the blushing had begun to go away, it came rushing back after that. Sharon noticed that time and laughed while Natasha stared straight ahead with a clenched jaw. There was no friendly way to say ‘you back looks like it was carved by gods and I had to touch it’. Any way she phrased it it sounded strange and there just could be no avoiding the embarrassment.

“You’re so red, you match your hair,” said Sharon through a laugh-induced wheeze.

“Yeah yeah,” muttered Natasha.

“I’m just kidding,” said Sharon with a playful nudge to her shoulder. “But you are really red. You don’t seem like someone to get embarrassed by nudity. And we’re not even naked.”

That was a good excuse. Not embarrassed to have let herself gawk at Sharon’s body for so long but embarrassed because she was down to her underwear and Sharon was shirtless.

“Well,” began Natasha. That was all she had lined up to say and nothing else came to her.

“Well,” repeated Sharon. Natasha could feel her eyes on her but she wouldn’t look, she stayed staring straight ahead. It lasted for ten odd seconds before Sharon made a noise of defeat. Then her hand was on Natasha’s cheek, turning her head and bringing her closer. Then her lips were on Natasha’s jaw, moving up until she met Natasha’s mouth.

Oh.

That was all Natasha could think was a surprised ‘oh’. Oh. Over and over as Sharon came back in for more and more and more and oh and oh and oh. Her body, which had been stiff at first, loosened and reached out towards Sharon blindly. One hand held a belt loop of her tightly while the other traveled up her back. Sharon mimicked the motion and had Natasha’s bra unclasped in a second. Oh.

And she laid Natasha down. And she bit her lip. Natasha wondered if she’d done this before, if she knew what she was doing. It was the first time in a long time that Natasha had felt so unsure of herself and of her next move. But she never got to make a next move at all.

“Agents Carter and Romanoff,” said a raspy voice from the bathroom.

Sharon sat bolt upright. Natasha followed her lead and struggled to get her damn bra clasped again. She hadn’t succeeded by the time the source of the voice came out into the bedroom.

“Oh—Sorry—I didn’t mean to catch you changing,” said Nick Fury, holding up his hand to cover his visual of Sharon and Natasha.

“We got some embedded glass.” Sharon pulled her shirt back on. “We had to get it out.”

“From the window you flew through I presume,” laughed Fury. Natasha was too shaky and in pain to get her clothes back on so she wrapped herself in the covers instead and let Fury put his hand down.

“You tailing us?” asked Sharon.

“Not you as much as her,” said Fury pointing to Natasha.

“Why’re you tailing me?” snapped Natasha.

“Well a little birdie, named Stark, asked me if I could track you down. Apparently you’ve gone a little AWOL according to him. He wants you brought in ‘willingly’ so they can negotiate your sentence and avoid prison time,” said Fury.

“I’m not going back.”

“I told him no. After the accords he doesn’t have the influence to keep you out of prison anyway.” Fury took a seat in the arm chair. “But I was curious about where you were going and what your plan was. After that shootout in the mall parking lot, I figured you didn’t have much of a plan.”

“You saw that?” asked Sharon in complete disbelief. “Why didn’t you do something?”

“You knocked out the sniper before I had the chance to, Ace,” snapped Fury. “So I followed you to that hotel—and before you get pissed off again, I tried to help you but you flew through a window before I was needed. I did keep the cops off you two for a little while though. They’re headed back towards New York thanks to me.”

“Thanks, Nick,” said Natasha with a smile. It was nice to know that the people she assumed had abandoned her were still behind her.

“I’ve got more to tell you two than that,” said Fury. “There’s been a breach.”

“In what?” said Sharon.

“In a certain prison facility that a certain few people are locked up in,” said Fury.

“How do you know?” said Natasha.

“Here’re the facts. Rogers and Barnes ran off with T’challa after the falling out last week. We couldn’t track the king’s technology, he’s far more advanced than that. So we’ve been in Rogers-limbo, and the CIA still are, but Rogers, for good reason, trusts me,” said Fury as if he were bragging. “The same day Stark asks me to track you funny enough, Rogers came back from wherever he jetted off to to collect a few good men and woman.”

“And…he left me?” said Natasha.

“You weren’t locked up.”

“But I…” her sentenced petered off.

“That doesn’t mean he’s not coming,” said Fury. “You may not be in prison but he knows you’re both in trouble for what you did for him.”

“What happened to them?” asked Sharon. “Are they all in Wakanda?”

“It’s murky. I met with him very, very briefly and from what he told me, no. It sounds like Clint, Wanda, and Clint’s family are taking a prolonged vacation for awhile. I don’t know what happened to that ant dude. But he did take Wilson with him.”

“Steve can’t do for us anything we can’t do for ourselves except in one area,” said Sharon. “Our plan is to get a disused quinjet and take it to Wakanda. We need an escort into those airspaces or we’re going to get shot down. We might even need an escort out of our own airspace if the CIA catches onto us. Do you have any communications with Steve or T’challa? Do you have any way at all to tell them that?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Fury. “I’m making no promises though.”

“Thank you in advance,” said Sharon.

“Keep watching your backs. They’ve got the country’s best on your cases and if you don’t get to that quinjet soon you’re gonna lose.”

“Goodnight, Nick,” said Natasha.

“Goodnight, Natasha,” replied Fury. He left the way he came, through the bathroom window. She and Sharon stood still and listened, waiting to here his final exit before they resumed themselves. Sharon turned and locked eyes with Natasha briefly. Natasha couldn’t read her, she couldn’t tell if she was going to climb back on top of her of hit her.

In the end she did neither. They stared each other down for a minute, or an eternity.

“We should get some sleep.” Sharon turned out the lights and got into the other twin bed.

Natasha wondered how exactly she was going to sleep after that but she had to try. They were going to have a very long day when they woke next and she wanted to be ready for it.

 

~~~~~~~~~~

 

“Romanoff, wake up. We’ve gotta get going.” Sharon shook Natasha’s shoulder until she woke, tired and bleary-eyed she stared up at Sharon. The sunlight haloed her blonde hair perfectly. She could hardly see the residual brown hair dye. Even where she could it looked good.

“What time is it?” grumbled Natasha.

“Seven thirty. I packed you all up, you just need to get dressed.”

Natasha nodded and sat up. She stretched her tired, aching muscles out and stepped into the bathroom to get ready. She tugged her clothes on, rinsed her mouth out with the complimentary mouthwash, and splashed enough cold water in her face to cause hypothermia. And then she was ready to go.

“We should lift another car,” said Sharon.

“Yeah something smaller this time I think.”

“It’s your call, you’ve been on the run more than I have.”

“Smaller it is, then,” said Natasha with a smile, hoping it would reach Sharon. She didn’t smile back, instead she stared at her feet and kicked at the cheap carpeting.

“Last night—I don’t really know what happened…” mumbled Sharon. She took a breath and looked up to meet Natasha’s eyes. “Can you forgive me.”

“I…There’s nothing to forgive,” said Natasha with an uncomfortable laugh. That wasn’t what she wanted to say. She wanted to tell her much more than ‘it’s okay’. She wanted to shower her praise and excitement and tell her her lips tasted better than her favorite fruit, her neck smelled better than perfume, and the weight of her body damn near cured her anxieties. But she said, “Really, it’s fine.”

“It’s been a rough couple days for us both—“

“Exactly,” interrupted Natasha. “Shit like that happens when you’re on the run.”

“Oh, it does?” said Sharon with a cocked head.

“All the time,” said Natasha, lying through her teeth. “It’s the adrenaline.”

“Well…alright, let’s keep moving.”

They lifted a nicer car from the lot, a Lexus. An old Lexus that had the distinct odor of spilt alcohol but a Lexus still. The plan was to drive to the train station, catch the train down into Virginia and meet up with the governor.

“Do you know him well enough to just show up?”

“He’s having a party and he’s kind of…gross, for lack of a better word. If we dress up he’ll talk to us.”

“So what happens when they find out we’re there?” asked Natasha.

“They won’t,” said Sharon.

“They found us in our hotel. We need a backup.”

“Well,” Sharon pulled off the highway. “Access to the hanger with the quinjet is granted by clearance badges. No fingerprints and no IDs.”

“That sounds stupid.”

“He has lots of women _around_ and he likes to be able to gift them free plane rides to wherever they want every now and then. Granting each woman clearance is tedious. So instead there’s one level of clearance for all planes and the CIA guards their own.”

“So the only clearance the CIA has for flying one of their best jets is a badge that can be held by everyone?”

“There’s a reason we’re going all this way to get this one. Every other hanger requires your CIA serial and obviously mine’s no longer valid.”

“If there’s no harsh security why don’t we just break in?”

“Because,” said Sharon sounding annoyed, “the CIA doesn’t like having almost no safeguards over who takes the jet so anyone breaking in, anyone without a badge, gets to deal with the mountain of guards surrounding the area. So long as we have our badge and keep our heads down it’ll be fine but running in there, guns blazing isn’t gonna get us a plane.”

“So we have to get all dolled up?” laughed Natasha.

“I believe in you,” teased Sharon.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

They pulled up and ditched the car at the train station before buying two tickets Virginia-bound. The station was empty for the most part. Above-ground trains just weren’t as popular as they’d once been which could either help or hurt them. The chance that the CIA would look for them in a train was slim, but if they did they’d be an easy target.

It was a chance they had to take but they each had their own anxieties externalizing themselves as they waited for the train. Natasha couldn’t stop bouncing her leg and Sharon had cracked her knuckles more times than Natasha though possible. The cracking knuckles annoyed Natasha, and she could tell her bouncing leg annoyed Sharon but neither said a word about the other. They sat and waited and when the time came they boarded the train with the other few passengers.

“We should’ve bought playing cards,” said Sharon once the train pulled out of the station.

“Hindsight’s 20/20,” replied Natasha.

“Wanna play I-spy?”

“Not really,” said Natasha.

“Neither do I.”

“How long’s this ride anyway?”

“About five hours. We could probably just sleep some more,” said Sharon.

“You can go first.”

“Alright, wake me if you need anything.”

Natasha watched the countryside roll on by her, her eyes occasionally flicking back to Sharon, and wondered why she couldn’t have that life she watching everyone on the countryside live. Why couldn’t she have a small little farm house, a nice husband…or whatever, and a few kids running around her feet. Why did it have to be her they chose for Hydra, why did they have to sterilize her, and why did she have to really get to know Sharon only now.

“I can’t sleep anymore,” grumbled Sharon in the seat across from her. Natasha snapped out of her country-life day dream.

“I can’t either.”

“Wanna play 20 questions?” said Sharon.

“Can I ask you something personal…again?” said Natasha.

“I’m an open book,” said Sharon.

“Where did you grow up?”

She looked as surprised to hear that question as Natasha was to ask it. It wasn’t exactly an interesting question, or one that required permission to ask but technically it was personal.

“Um…I grew up in D.C….And you?”

“Russia,” said Natasha with a smile. “Did you have any pets?”

“I had a dog, Porkchop. He was a doberman. Died when I was fourteen and we got another dog, Meatball, also a doberman,” said Sharon. “He’s still alive, my mom has him."

“Porkchop and Meatball?” laughed Natasha.

“I was a fat kid, shut up. And what about you, any pets?”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t allowed any.”

“Strict parents?” Natasha was silent, waiting for Sharon to realize the water she was treading into. “Sorry…I shouldn’t’ve said…anything.”

“But when I was in training with the other girls, we found a stray cat. We couldn’t bring him into the boarding house we lived in but we would leave food out by the kitchen door.”

“Oh, you lived in a boarding house?”

“It was actually a pretty house. The rooms we had were nice. It was once a ballet academy and that was what the girls who entered thought they were getting into. The best got recruited by ‘talent scouts’ and eventually moved into a much different house,” said Natasha with a smirk to try and conceal the pain that came with remembering that place. Some of her closest friends had been made there and nearly all had been lost there.

“You wanted to be a ballerina?” asked Sharon.

“I was good,” said Natasha. “I was very good. Never got to perform though. I got recruited by Hydra when I was ten and the Russian ballet never needed nine year olds so…"

“Your parents just…let you go to that school?” asked Sharon. Natasha could hear the anger she was trying to withhold.

“I’m their only child…I think. They didn’t know better and on the outside it was very prestigious. I got a full scholarship and the ability to pursue my dream at the time. Every parent’s wish for their child.”

“Have you…seen them since?”

Natasha shook her head. “I can remember my mother’s face though. I had a picture of her until I got recruited and they torched everything I owned.”

“I’m…Sorry—I don’t mean to keep dragging these things up for you, I’m really sorry.”

“I wouldn’t talk about it if I weren’t at least a little okay with it…Tell me more about where you grew up.”

“Well…I grew up in a small neighborhood, everyone knew each other. My mom thought it would sort of disband some of the following she’d gotten. Peggy was just so famous, especially when we were kids because the secrecy she needed back in world war two wasn’t necessary. People used to hound us about her and it got old.”

“You were close with Peggy?”

“Very. She and my mother disagreed on almost everything and she was always on my side…She’s the reason I joined SHIELD in the first place.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” said Natasha.

“And yours too,” replied Sharon.

“Let’s play 20 questions, I’m tired of being sad.”

They did. They played 20 questions over and over until they switch to I-spy. They then moved onto the alphabet game and finally ended on chopsticks. That lasted them three hours and the train staff decided they’d all earned lunch. Coldcuts and mashed potatoes. It was clearly supposed to resemble food but it didn’t and eating it took a lot of nose-holding and swallowing-whole but they managed.

 

~~~~~~~~~~

 

Natasha was listening with a level of interest she never thought possible to a story about Sharon’s first mission. She’d tagged along with Peggy and had been so fundamentally bad at her only job of ‘staying behind Peggy’ that she nearly quit SHIELD altogether. When Sharon told it, every other sentence had her in fits of laughter as she recalled how clumsy she’d been.

Unfortunately the story was interrupted by a loud crash on the roof of their carriage. The passengers all laughed once they were sure nothing bad had happened, and one made a joke about an enormous bird landing on the roof. But Natasha and Sharon knew it was no bird, they knew something much heavier than a bird had landed square in the middle of their train and they weren’t going to wait around to meet them. The two of them wordlessly gathered what little they had with them and moved towards the vestibule in a hurry.

“We crossed the Virginia border about an hour ago, we’re already close so if we have to bail it’s okay,” whispered Sharon behind Natasha. Natasha pried open the door to the carriage behind theres and just as it shut behind Sharon there was a second crash, this time it was much louder.

Natasha peeked through the windows to see two CIA agents scouring the carriage they just narrowly escaped. Sharon grabbed her wrist and pulled her through the seats of people and into the next car and the next car until they got to the first open-air vestibule.

As soon as the door opened the wind whipped Natasha’s hair into her face so hard it might as well have been a slap.

“What’re we doing out here?!” screamed Natasha over the deafening sound of the train on the tracks and the wind in their ears.

“They’ll look for us on top last!” replied Sharon. “Buys us some time!”

“If you say so!” replied Natasha. She and Sharon climbed up the build in ladder onto the top of the train. Natasha had swung her way down onto one train-top in her life. It was a freight train going half the speed. This passenger train, going twice the speed, didn’t at all lend itself to being climbed on. The wind was going too fast and the rooftops of the carriages were too aerodynamic to be good traction.

“Stay low!” yelled Sharon as she army crawled her way across the top. Natasha did the same. They got two carriages into the train before Sharon decided it was far enough and secured her and Natasha a handle of sorts to hang onto. It was just a rope tied to one of the pipes but if one of them lost their footing it was enough to hold on.

She and Natasha were both tossing idea back and forth in their minds. Neither had anything good enough to voice.

A shot rang out.

Sharon pulled Natasha down as flat as they could go and searched for the source. It was one of the agents climbing his way on top of the train on the same ladder they had used, though he was having a much harder time with it and was only visible from the waist up.

Natasha reached into her holster and shot back. His bullet proof vest took away all the lethality of her shot but not any of the power. He flew backwards and off of the ladder into the mysterious area between the two carriages. Natasha didn’t have time to care about what happened to him since his friend was shooting at them from the other end of the train. Sharon shot back and got him in the thigh. But he didn’t go down.

Sharon got flat and put a hand in Natasha’s back to make her do the same, as if she needed prompting, when the man fired on them again. The second the bullets stopped, Sharon hurled herself up on her knees and fired again, this time through his arm.

“Stop avoiding his chest, he’s got a vest on!” screamed Natasha. She could barely hear herself there was a very slim chance that Sharon could hear her. But after she screamed, Sharon shot him square in the chest and watched him roll off the train motionless.

She stood then, the wind somehow no longer affecting her, and stared at the man’s body that lay on the side of the tracks. Natasha stared with her and waited and waited and then the train turned a corner.

“He’s not dead!” said Natasha. “He’s hurt but he’s not dead, it’s okay!"

“How do you know that?!”

“I just do!"

“Where’s the other one?!”

As if on cue, the other man rose from between the two carriages and openfired on them. Something about the wind, about the train being mid turn, about the man being injured, ruined his aim. One ricocheted off the top of the train and went off into no mans land, the other seven he fired didn’t even come near her or Sharon. He noticed that too and threw his gun out into the surrounding fields in frustration. And geared up to charge at them.

The top of a moving train was not a good place to fight. Especially when she and Sharon didn’t have the weight to keep them from flying off at the slightest provocation. So instead of waiting for the man to come to them, Natasha jumped to her feet as much as the wind would allow, and dragged Sharon with her until they reached the very last carriage. The man was close behind and firing from a smaller gun he had strapped to his hip. Sharon weighed more and easily broke through the skylight in the final compartment. She landed amongst the kitchen supplies with a groan.

Natasha heard another shot. A close shot. A very close shot. Then she too jumped into the last cart.

“You okay?” said Sharon, nursing a twisted ankle. Natasha wanted to say yes but a horrible pain on the side of her head stopped her.

Natasha touched the side of her head with caution, and blood was left on her fingers. Sharon panicked before Natasha even had the chance to. She scrambled to examine her but thankfully she sighed in deep relief.

“It grazed your ear, Nat…It just grazed your ear.”

“I’ve always wanted a second piercing,” said Natasha. Before they could laugh at themselves for being so worried, the man fell into the carriage with them. He fell directly onto Natasha which left her with very little means to fight back, but Sharon was on it. The remorse she felt for the man she threw overboard didn’t apply to this man for some reason. She held nothing back. Natasha could just watch from her corner as Sharon dismantled the man. A broken nose, a snapped wrist, and a confiscated gun later and the man cried uncle. Sharon showed mercy and let him live. But she did handcuff his snapped wrist to the nearest pipe.

He tried to wriggle through that handcuff but too much pain surged through him and he gave up. Sharon made her way back to Natasha and held a hand out for her. Natasha took it and stood.

“Now what?”

“We’ll figure it out, let’s patch up your ear before people notice it,” said Sharon.

They meandered through the debris Sharon had created in the fight and through to the vestibule where the restroom was. Sharon shuffled through her bag and pulled out the all-too-familiar first aid kit.

“I’m gonna run out of antiseptic if you keep this up,” said Sharon with a shaky laugh.

“Is it a big hole?” asked Natasha.

“No, once it stops bleeding I doubt you’ll even notice it. It’s just the top of your ear.”

“How do you bandage an ear?” said Natasha.

“We’re about to find out.”

“After we find out we need to get off this train.”

“We’re ten miles from the first stop, we’re gonna get of there like nothing happened, steal a car, go get dresses, spend the night somewhere, go to the governor’s ball, steal the plane, leave.”

“Sounds good.” Natasha clenched her jaw while Sharon wrapped her ear in cotton and secured it with a bandage.

“Hopefully this heals up enough before tomorrow night, the governor likes up-dos,” said Sharon with fake concern.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

No more meals were scheduled for the train ride so no one found the CIA man handcuffed in the kitchen carriage, and no alarms were raised. The CIA men themselves must have spoken with the engineers and staff about the situation because, though everyone was talking about it, no one was doing anything about it. They were all speculating on who they were looking for and why, no one noticed they’d disappeared. Natasha and Sharon feigned disappointment when they rejoined their carriage ‘found out’ they’d ‘missed the fun’, and joined in with the speculations of the other passengers.

They got off the train calmly, they walked slowly and evenly to the parking lot where they casually stole another car. Natasha drove this time, it was her turn. They drove slow too. Never going more than five miles above the speed limit, and never going below the speed limit either. It was difficult to stay calm and collected when they knew just how close the CIA was, but otherwise they’d be caught.

“Alright, we’re going to another department store, in another mall and we’re gonna find two dresses and it’ll be fine,” said Natasha. “Right, Sharon?”

“Right,” replied Sharon with considerably less confidence. “Sorry, I’m a little shaken up.”

“Sharon, he’s alive. You shot him in the leg, that’s not fatal. He’ll be okay.”

“It’s not that it’s…Nevermind, I’ll get over it.”

They rode the rest of the ride in a comfortable silence broken occasionally by the radio or by either one of them pointing out something strange on either side of the almost-baron road they were on. By three that afternoon they were pulling into the next town over’s department store. Natasha parked in the parking garage this time, considering their last mall experience had been far more lethal than most.

“How much money do we have for dresses, Sharon?” asked Natasha.

“…Not…enough,” replied Sharon. “We’ll work it out.”

“You mean steal ‘em?”

“I mean steal ‘em. It’s for the greater good, Nat.”

After their altercation on the train, they were worn out and put on the first dresses they found that could pass for more expensive than they were. Sharon found hers quick, it was elegant, well made, and a shade of emerald that made her eyes look fantastic.

Natasha found one across the store in petites, where the shorter women shopped. Sharon teased her for it and followed her into the dressing room. It was blue and cut lower than Sharon’s but just as sophisticated and just as passable as a rich-person dress.

“It looks great on you, Nat.”

“How much is it?”

Sharon reached into the back of her dress and checked the tag. “Yikes, it’s 200.”

“Wow.”

“We’ve gotta get some shoes too remember. Those I think we can just wear out, that way we break ‘em in too. What size shoe do you wear?”

“7.”

“Okay I’ll grab something, we’ll put ‘em on in here, walk out with confidence, no one’ll know the difference.”

Natasha trusted her judgement. She’d never had to steal clothes before and felt very adolescent doing so. She changed back into her regular clothes and hung the dress up on the hanger next to Sharon’s.

“Okay,” Sharon barreled back in with two pairs of shoes in her hands. Natasha put the heels she was handed on and Sharon did the same.

“So we have to break into the hanger in these heels then?”

“Put your other shoes in your bag if you’re so worried about it.” Natasha did and noticed that Sharon did as well. Then, from the pits of her shoebox, she pulled out two dress bags.

“Where’d you get those?”

“An unattended cashier’s desk.”

“You sound like you’ve done this a lot,” said Natasha. Sharon smirked in response. The two of them covered their dresses in the bags and tied them at the bottom just as a cashier would. They looked convincingly like they had bought the dresses. They walked out calmly and meandered their way through the mall in their heels.

“We gotta eat,” said Sharon as they passed the food court.

“Out here? In the open?” said Natasha.

“We’ll get something to go but I’m _starving_ ,” said Sharon. She pulled over into a line for asian food. Natasha had to admit that once she got a whiff of it, her stomach growled.

Sharon ordered maybe half of the menu and Natasha was tempted to do the same but _one_ of them had to take into consideration how little money they had left. They got their to-go boxes and headed back through the mall in search of the exit that led to their parking garage.

“I think it was by the Neiman Marcus,” said Sharon, half an eggroll in her mouth.

“No it was by the Target because when we walked in I said ‘oh look Target’,” replied Natasha.

“Oh yeah.”

Natasha took a step towards the Target exit, no more than 100 yards away, and stopped short. Agents weren’t very good at disguising themselves. No human person just spoke to no one with their finger in their ear, or whispered into their sleeve. The agent at the bottom of the escalators was doing just that, whispering sweet nothings into his leather jacket.

“Sharon, there’s one. And he’s talking to more.”

“Fuck—How’d they find us out here?” mumbled Sharon.

“It’ll be fine. I’ve done this one before.”

“They’re blocking our exit, Nat, we can’t just barrel through, they know our faces.”

“Public displays of affection make people uncomfortable.”

“Yes, they do.”

“Put your arm around me and don’t look at them.”

Sharon did as she was told. Dresses and bag of takeout in one hand, Natasha wrapped in the other. They said nothing to eachother, Natasha repeated the phrase ‘peas and carrots’ with different intonations to signal when Sharon should laugh, she picked up on them expertly and they passed the first agent at the bottom of the escalator. He didn’t even look twice, Natasha knew he didn’t because she did.

“Two more by the door,” said Sharon through the clenched teeth of a forced smile. “Shit, they’re coming towards us—We’ve gotta bail, Nat.”

“No we don’t, just be cool.”

The agents hadn’t spotted them, Natasha could tell. They were just meandering from the door, back to the first agent in hopes that somewhere in between they’d find Natasha and Sharon, they weren’t slowly advancing on the two of them. If they got any closer though, they’d notice that under Natasha’s hood was her signature red hair and it’d be over. Just before that point of no return, Natasha pushed Sharon against the wall and tried to kiss her. ‘Tried’ being the operative word. Sharon hadn’t really understood what she was attempting to do and froze for a moment.

“Kiss me idiot,” muttered Natasha through a smile. Sharon didn’t kiss her but instead became receptive to being kissed. She let the touch of Natasha’s hand on the back of her neck pull her in and swallow her up. The world melted around Natasha and she forgot all about the agents, all about trying to get away for just a split second.

“They’re gone,” said Sharon against Natasha’s lips. Natasha pulled away, her eyes still fluttering open.

“I couldn’t see ‘em, sorry,” said Natasha. She abruptly turned and lead them both out of the now-clear exit. It was a mystery to her why she couldn’t just enjoy Sharon’s company as the friend she’d been for two years. Every time they’d been together before, sure, Natasha could’ve stayed with her into the wee hours of the morning, but why, the first chance she got to actually do that, did she become so enthralled. So embarrassingly, blatantly enthralled.

They walked to the car in silence and drove away in silence, Natasha’s knuckles were white around the wheel. White and tense.

“Want your food now?” said Sharon.

“I’ll wait for the motel.”

“Me too then.”

Sharon put the bag of their takeout in the backseat and stared straight ahead.

“Ya know, Nat,” began Sharon awkwardly.

“What?” sighed Natasha.

“The two of us we—” She was interrupted by glass shattering. A bullet had gone straight through the windshield but thankfully right between their seats. There was no indication of who had done it but the matching entry wound in the back window gave them a hint.

“I knew we should’ve gotten a new car,” muttered Natasha. The street car behind them was doing 90 and had two agents hanging out of either side, guns loaded and firing. They’d appeared out of nowhere and frustrating as it was to not have seen them earlier, Natasha had been distracted and there was just no helping that.

“Don’t get off the highway,” said Sharon. She rolled the window down and fired back. The opposing car swerved. Sharon shot up their windshield in hopes that with little means to see they’d give up and pull over, or at least slow down.

Natasha floored it and swerved through the traffic, the cars were beginning to part automatically as the ruckus from behind became more and more noticeable.

“Can’t this thing go any faster?!” screamed Sharon.

“If I go any faster the pedal’ll be through the floor!”

Sharon continued shooting out the window but it wan’t sustainable. They had more shooters and notably more guns, this wouldn’t end in their favor. So Natasha ignored Sharon’s advice. Just before the next exit Natasha did some damage to the brakes and veered off onto the exit ramp. It was too sudden for the CIA car to follow behind and empty enough for her to keep speeding by.

“Good job!” said Sharon as she pulled herself back into the car.

“I know. Now let’s ditch this car and find somewhere to eat in peace.”

“Not yet, we’ve gotta make a little headway before tomorrow. And no more highway, we gotta start taking backroads.”

“Will that lengthen our trip at all?”

“By a few hours I think. But we’ve got time, we’ll still make it to the ball.”

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Yet another car, another few hours driving, and another motel later. Sharon had turned on some local channel that was playing nothing but a live feed of the local park. They sat together, crosslegged on the bed, watching the people run by the camera, swing on the swing set, and for a good thirty minutes they watched a black screen after a bug had landed on the lens.

“I love this show,” said Sharon sarcastically.

“It’s really evocative,” replied Natasha.

“Didn’t it win something at Cannes?”

“It won everything at Cannes, yes.”

Sharon laughed and took her last bite of the lo mein she’d been working on for roughly thirty minutes.

“Lemme check your ear,” said Sharon. Natasha pulled her hair from her neck and let Sharon peek under the bandage on her ear. “It stopped bleeding.”

“Nice.”

“Think we can let it air our from now on.”

Sharon was very delicate when she peeled the bandage from Natasha’s ear. It hurt but definitely not as much as it should have. One hand held her jaw very lightly while the other unraveled the layers of bandage slowly and precisely. And finally the last layer was off, but Sharon’s hands stayed where they were. Natasha turned to look at her, her face still in Sharon’s hands, and then. Oh.

Sharon’s lips were sweeter than before somehow. Sweeter and warmer and more inviting. They pressed more firmly against Natasha’s this time. Natasha worked as fast as she could on the buttons of Sharon’s shirt. It wasn’t fast enough evidently and Sharon ripped it off herself. Natasha took that brief pause to tug her own shirt off. As soon as it hit the floor, Sharon was back on her, her tongue ravaging every inch of Natasha’s mouth.

“You want this too, right?” mumbled Sharon in between kisses. It hadn’t occurred to Natasha until Sharon said it. That she wanted Sharon. She wasn’t enthralled and impressed and starstruck and awestruck by Sharon, she was something else altogether. She didn’t enjoy those kisses because they were harmless fun, she enjoyed them because they were Sharon. All those evenings with her at Stark’s parties, all those awkwardly stunted conversations that her questioning her ability to socialize, all those moments wondering if they could be more, all those moments trying to get closer never gave her the hint. None of it clicked until Sharon asked and her whole body screamed one loud resounding ‘yes’.

Natasha’s hands met behind Sharon’s back and worked to unclasp her bra. It took longer than she was proud of but she did it. Sharon did the same for Natasha. Then she slipped her straps down her arms and tossed her plain beige bra across the room. Natasha just stared. Sharon was gorgeous, that plain on the surface, no one could ignore it but she hadn’t expected every last inch of her body to be just as perfect. It was her turn to dive right in and she did. With little to no hesitation she pinned Sharon to the bed, got two handfuls of her breasts and one mouthful of her nipple.

The writhing of Sharon’s body underneath her egged her on until finally she couldn’t take it. She sat up and did the same as Sharon, threw her bra in the general direction of gone.

“Wow,” said Sharon, a smile quirking her face. Natasha blushed and smiled right back. Her head hit the mattress as Sharon did the same for her, licking every inch of her chest and toying with her nipples for too long. Then he hand dipped lower and lower until. Oh.

“Stop teasing me,” whined Natasha, “do it harder.”

“Okay,” whispered Sharon against Natasha’s neck. She unbuttoned and unzipped Natasha’s pants in seconds, on quick tug had them at her knees. Natasha jolted in surprise. A lot was happening all at once and it was tough to process but she’d sooner die than slow down. Her pants flew across the room and joined her other clothes. Sharon’s hands snaked up Natasha’s thighs and spread them apart.

“You know what you’re doing?” said Natasha.

“I can figure it out,” replied Sharon, her thumb made heavy circles against her clit and Natasha knew she was telling the truth. Sharon paused briefly to strip herself down, fumbling over her pantlegs and panties before jumping back on the bed with Natasha and stripping her of her last bit of modesty. And off when her panties in one swift motion. And without missing one beat, Sharon’s mouth made a perfect seal around her clit and she sucked generously. Natasha’s thighs squeezed together, but Sharon kept them apart and open, receptive to what she was doing.

Natasha’s heels rested in Sharon’s back and dug in when she caught a good spot. They really dug in when she curled her fingers inside of her, stroking against the muscles that had Natasha’s legs shaking. She grabbed fistfuls of Sharon’s hair and ground up against her face, desperate for more, harder, faster.

“Sharon—Shar—Oh!” What followed was a series of staccato ‘oh’s and a lot of writing against Sharon’s face. Sharon took it all, her tongue exploring every inch of Natasha like her orgasm gave life. Gradually her grip in Sharon’s hair loosened and Sharon stopped tonguing the nerve endings that sent Natasha into a convulsion with no provocation. She crawled up Natasha’s body and pressed their mouths together, Natasha graciously accepted her tongue and tasted herself in Sharon.

“How was that?” whispered Sharon.

“Get on your back,” replied Natasha. Sharon obeyed and let Natasha climb on top of her. Natasha began with fingers. She wanted to watch Sharon’s reaction so she began by slipping two fingers into her. It was remarkably easy given how wet she was already. She plunged them in deep and hard and watched Sharon writhe each time she deigned to rub that mysterious pleasure point. She kept it hard, deep, and passionate until Sharon begged her to finish the job. So she did.

She’d never tasted any woman before and yet somehow knew no woman tasted as good as Sharon. She overflowed with wetness that Natasha couldn’t lap up fast enough. She did as Sharon had and sucked her clit until her hips bucked off of the mattress. Her hand kept it’s hard, deep ministrations as Sharon struggled to stay still. Sharon’s breathing got heavy and loud and uneven. A wayward hand of hers knocked the bedside lamp off and told Natasha she was getting close. She sucked harder, fucked deeper, and seconds later, Sharon’s whole body contracted around her fingers. The cry she let out was inhumanly, gut-wrenchingly erotic.

Natasha rode her orgasm out with her, continuing the fucking and the sucking until Sharon’s hand reach down and pulled ever so lightly on her arm, signaling for her to come back up. Sharon kissed her deeper than before and wrapped her arms around her tighter than before.

They caught their breath in each others arms then laid there in a comfortable silence. Sharon curled Natasha’s hair around her fingers and Natasha counted the freckles on Sharon’s chest.

“I’ve been wanting to do that a while,” said Sharon finally.

“I think, I have too.”

“You really fuckin’ scared me…that bullet that grazed your ear could’ve killed you.”

“But it didn’t.”

“But it could have.”

“But it didn’t.”

Her hold on Natasha got a bit tighter. “I feel like I know you so much better than I do.”

“Who’s to say you don’t?”

Sharon laughed, it resonated in her chest and echoed in Natasha’s ear. “Let’s sleep, we’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

 

~~~~~~~~~

 

The slept in and woke together, slowly, and with the gradual nuisance of the sun in their eyes. Natasha was the first awake and jostled Sharon enough to wake her. Their eyes met, their cheeks flushed with embarrassment, and they both grinned and laughed almost uncontrollably.

The laughing stopped but the smiling didn’t as it gave way to more. After years of knowing each other but never _finding_ each other they weren’t eager to let their opportunity slip through their fingers. They capitalized on the time they had together and spent it getting as _together_ as they could. The ball was two hours away and they had six hours to get there.

Then they had five, then they had four, then they had three, and then Natasha’s legs were so weak, her body so shaken from hours upon hours of Sharon that she had to call it quits.

“If you weren’t gonna I was,” said Sharon when Natasha became visibly embarrassed that she was the one who had to call a time out. And then they were back to the laughing, the teasing, running fingers over and pinching the expanses of skin they rarely got to see of each other.

They laughed and giggled their way through a shower and an entire morning routine. Brushing their teeth in unison and laughing when they noticed, getting dressed and laughing when they saw the other sneaking peeks.

They packed up their things and wandered out into the parking lot looking for a car. Sharon got one that some poor soul had left unlocked. Hotwiring was second nature to them both now and took no time. They hit the road with only a thirty minute time buffer from when they had to be at the ball. If they drove on the highways they’d make it on time but risk being seen by some CIA agent again. It was a risk they had to take now that they’d spent their morning doing something far from planning their next moves.

By it was worth it. By leaps and bounds, it was worth it.

 

~~~~~~~~

 

“You ever…had a girlfriend before, Carter?” asked Natasha. She and Sharon had been exchanging smiles the last ten minutes of the car ride but Natasha had a few questions lined up. Questions she’d had lined up ever since Sharon first kissed her.

“Never,” said Sharon. “Why? Have you?”

“No,” replied Natasha.

“Really?” Sharon cocked her head. “You seemed like…you really knew what you were doing.”

“I think that’s just part of the territory. I mean…I know what feels good because I can feel it too,” said Natasha, her face reddening.

“That makes sense.” Sharon’s face was equally red.

“So you’ve really never had a girlfriend?” said Natasha again.

“I already answered that one, Nat,” teased Sharon.

“Yeah I just…am curious…about…how it all happened. I mean weren’t you into Steve until like two days ago?”

Sharon sighed, deep and heavy and shrugged. “I don’t know…I thought I was into Steve too.”

“How’d you find out you weren’t?”

“I kissed him. Felt…like nothing at all…I wondered if maybe that was just gonna be the case with every man I met and then I kissed you.” Sharon turned to her briefly with a smile spread across her face. “A whole world opened up when I did that.”

“For you and me both,” said Natasha.

“Looking back, a lot makes sense now. I remember when I first met you, I spent that night researching everything about you, I was obsessed and I couldn’t figure out why. I guess that’s what a major crush is like, just blind obsession for awhile.”

“Wow, that’s so embarrassing, Sharon,” said Natasha with a loud laugh that Sharon mimicked.

“It’s pretty bad, yeah,” replied Sharon.

“Embarrassing but kind of adorable.”

“C’mon, don’t leave me out to dry like this, did you not have a crush on me before? You must’ve done something stupid and embarrassing?”

Natasha shook her head proudly. “Nothin’. I’m normal.”

“ _C’mon_. Make it fair, tell me something embarrassing."

“Well—“ began Natasha.

“Well, what?” interrupted Sharon too eagerly.

“If you interrupt I won’t tell you.” Sharon rolled her eyes. “When Barnes broke out of the cell that day and was running around the building fighting everyone and everything and you got a few punches in…that night I dreamed about it on a constant loop. I woke up really confused but it makes sense now."

“Now we’re even,” said Sharon through a wheeze of laughter.

“Yours is way worse! Yours was a conscious decision!”

Sharon didn’t stop laughing but Natasha started. It would’ve interested her, if it weren’t so depressing. She hadn’t gone through as many men as most thought. She tried to stick with a few as far as relationships went. She’d wasted years upon years thinking she’d find a man that made her feel all those things she was supposed to feel. On the one hand, it was exhilarating and exciting to feel every last one of those emotions, brand new, for the first time, with Sharon all in one night. And on the other, she could’ve been so much happier two whole years ago the day she met Sharon.

“Do you think…” began Natasha, wondering if she still wanted to complete her sentence. “Do you think T’challa and Steve and Barnes and Wilson…think they’ll mind?”

“They won’t mind,” laughed Sharon.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because…I have my reasons—Steve’s our friend. Sam’s your friend and T’challa’s their friend. There’s no chance of…this…thing…being an issue.”

“What about Barnes?” said Natasha. “If T’challa’s got him all fixed up over there, he’s back to being a guy from the 30s.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Sharon. Something in her tone of voice calmed Natasha, as if whatever secret information it was that Sharon couldn’t tell would definitely convince Natasha everything was fine.

“So…this…thing?” continued Natasha.

“Mhm,” nodded Sharon. “This thing.”

“I mean…” Natasha wasn’t one to put herself out there in any way. It wasn’t her style. Her style was a few walls up around her guarded heart but something about Sharon had made her forget she ever build them. “I wanna stay…like this…with you.”

“Good, ‘cause after last night and all this morning I assumed we were together immediately, I honestly didn’t even consider another option.”

Natasha turned to look at her. It was such an honest answer that she had to make sure Sharon wasn’t being sarcastic. She wasn’t, and her bright red cheeks proved it.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Before they had to confidently pull up to the ball in their beat up old Camry, the two of them had to change into their dresses. They did so in the bathroom of a Home Depot they passed along the way. They slipped into the family bathroom and started getting ready for the night.

“So, plan is, we get in, mention I’m CIA but ya know, act ditzy. Get him to offer up a pass onto the hangar, get in the plane, fly to freedom.”

“I know the plan, Sharon.”

“I know…I’m getting nervous is all.”

“Why’s that?” Natasha’s eyes followed Sharon through the mirror.

“There’s a lot at stake…more than I thought there would be.”

“We’ll both come out of this okay. That, I promise you.”

“Don’t promise stuff like that, you’ll jinx us.”

“I’m not superstitious. Help me pin my hair so it covers my fucked up ear,” said Natasha. Sharon worked her red curls meticulously into place so they casually draped over her ear-wound. They strapped on their shoes, their guns, and left whatever they didn’t need in the bathroom behind them.

The employees’ heads turned when they walked out. It wasn’t often they saw people dressed for extravagant events leave their bathroom so the double-takes were understandable.

 

~~~~~~~~~~

 

Natasha drove them the last stretch of the way. The line of cars parked on the street was almost a half mile and Natasha knew that many of the guests still had yet to arrive. They got closer and closer and Sharon got more and more fidgety. There was no time to console her and she wouldn’t have accepted it anyway. Natasha kept her focus on confidently pulling the piece of shit car they were in up to the Governor’s Mansion.

“Look alive, Sharon.”

One of the staff opened the passenger door and held a hand for Sharon to take. Natasha got herself out since most of the staff was expecting her to be a chauffeur.

“Key’s in the ignition,” said Natasha to the young boy headed towards her who was no doubt one of the valets.

She caught up to Sharon and they walked in arm in arm. They slipped in with the crowd and avoided having their names checked, though something that simple wouldn’t have been a problem. Natasha could feel Sharon’s heart beating out of her chest by her wrist’s pulse. There was no way for Natasha to calm her down without making it obvious to everyone around them that she was nervous, something they just couldn’t afford.

The Governor’s Mansion was flooded with people dressed to the nines. The kind of people that could spot their cheap clothes from a mile away.

“You think they’ll notice we don’t belong?” asked Natasha under her breath.

“Actually I think it’ll help. If we look out of place and a little cheaper the governor will think we’re some kind of escort. It’ll make this whole thing a lot easier.”

“Alright, good luck,” said Natasha.

“And you.”

As they had planned, they split up at the head of the room and each made their rounds separately. The idea was they’d establish themselves as pleasant guests that didn’t need to be thrown out by security and track down the governor in one fell swoop. It was easier and quicker to split up and made their presences there a bit more natural. The guest list ran for miles and the groups of people in conversation were plentiful. No one was expected to know everyone which made it very easy for Natasha and Sharon, who knew no one, to go around making shallow introductions without raising any red flags.

“And you are, again?” asked the woman shaking Natasha’s hand.

“Mary Magdeline the third,” said Natasha with a grin. The woman was too polite to voice her confusion and Natasha moved onto the next group of people. In the process she grabbed a champagne flute and scanned the room for Sharon. She was scanning the room for Natasha and their eyes met. She gestured ever so slightly to the man she was walking towards. Natasha watch her greet him like an old friend, and watch confusion flash on his face before giving way to pleasant surprise. Getting across the room to join in the fun was difficult only because other guests were stopping her to introduce themselves. In any other mission she wouldn’t have minded having to schmooze with guests, but in this mission the CIA could break in at any time. She had no resources, no hints, no help, no warning when it came to the CIA and time was of the essence. Natasha graciously accepted a multitude of introductions, never giving her own, before she popped up behind Sharon.

“Oh—This is a good friend of mine…Selma…Blair,” said Sharon, tripping over Natasha’s new name.

“Like the actress?” The man held his hand out for Natasha to shake.

“Yes, like the actress,” replied Natasha. “A complete coincidence.”

“Are you with the CIA as well, Ms. Blair?” said the governor.

“I am, sir. I’m just a desk jockey though. Nothing interesting.”

“Governor Schwartz and I were just catching up,” said Sharon.

“Oh you two have met before?” said Natasha. She tried to keep her voice bubbly and enticing but the looming threat of the CIA bursting in at any time was grating on her.

“He didn’t remember either,” said Sharon with lighthearted disappointment in her voice. “We met last summer. We spent one of _those_ nights together.”

It was fake, Natasha knew it was fake, Natasha was watching her lie, and yet a weird flame of jealousy sprung up in the pit of her stomach.

“I didn’t forget you,” whispered the governor, he was just as unsavory as Sharon had described. “How could I after you taught me all those moves.”

Sharon playfully hit his arm. “Oh stop, the other guests will hear.”

“You don’t mind your friend hearing?”

“If anything, I’m hoping it’ll convince her to join us later,” whispered Sharon.

The governor looked to Natasha. That was her cue to do _something_. She winked and the governor winked back. His disgusting old hand was on Sharon’s perfect lower back as if he had any right to put it there.

“You women in high places are all alike, you’re untamable,” said the governor. Natasha had to physically refrain from rolling her eyes.

“Can’t we get you alone?” said Sharon with a fake pout.

“I’ll see what I can do, baby,” crooned the governor. “Hold that thought, I’ve gotta greet a few people but don’t move a muscle.”

“Do you have to be so…touchy?” said Natasha once they were alone.

“Do you want this to work?”

“He’s so gross and old, I don’t know how you’re not shoving him off.”

“Nat, you don’t have to be jealous,” teased Sharon, effectively shutting Natasha up. “When he comes back pretend we’re ready for the threesome right here right now in front of all these people, he’ll give us anything to stay.”

"And Selma Blair? Really? That was the best you could come up with?" said Natasha.

"It doesn't matter, we'll be gone in the next five minutes."

The two of them made gibberish small talk, each scanning the space behind the other for CIA agents, both came up empty. Natasha found it strange that after a morning of…not exactly getting a head start, the CIA hadn’t caught up to them. She felt as if any second the windows would all shatter as agents poured in from each and every side and just like that, their freedom would be lost to the wind and they’d spend the rest of their days in solitary confinement and be kept apart—

“What did I miss?” said the governor. Natasha snapped back into the sexy persona she had adopted for the evening and saw the lecherous grin come back to the man’s face.

“My friend and I were wondering,” said Sharon. She leant in close to him and put a hand on his shoulder to whisper in his ear. “Can we go somewhere a bit more private?”

“What…right now?” said the governor.

“It’s not like you prefer the party to _me_ ,” said Sharon.

“Of course not I just—I have to stay here for awhile—“

“My friend and I can find other arrangements for the night,” said Sharon coldly. She turned on her heel, her facial expression urging Natasha to do the same. It worked like a charm. The governor stuck his grubby hands out and grabbed both of their arms.

“Please, ladies. Stay. You can have free reign of the house, make yourselves at home—just stay,” said the governor far too desperately.

Sharon looked to Natasha to fake-consult about their decision before shrugging. “Okay we’ll stay, but we want total clearance, I’m tired of your guards telling me which bathrooms I can and can’t use. Come on, Charles, you know you can trust us with it, we’re CIA.”

“You’re right. Full clearance it is—take my badge, I don’t need it tonight,” said the overeager governor. He nearly ripped his damn belt loop off trying to hand Sharon his clearance badge. “Anywhere you want or need. I’ll be in my bedroom by ten—you remember where that is right?”

“Of course I do,” said Sharon. She took Natasha’s hand and led her away, pausing only to blow him a kiss. “We’ll see you then.”

Natasha rolled her eyes and might have mentioned something about her shamelessness to Sharon but their hands were together, and Natasha could feel her pulse. It was fast enough that Natasha wondered if it had actually just stopped altogether. It made sense of course. The tension was palpable. They were so close to freedom and yet their biggest obstacle still lay ahead of them.

“The airstrip’s on the other side of the lawns,” said Sharon.

“Doesn’t it get noisy here with an airstrip on his property?”

“No. If a plane ever lands or takes off he’s in it. We’ll snatch a golf cart and ride it over there, get on and…go.”

“We can do this, Carter, we’re going to do this.” Natasha couldn’t know if she was reassuring Sharon or herself, either way it didn’t work.

They made fake conversation all the way through the winding halls and down the stairs, out onto the porch, and into one of the many golf carts. A young boy handed them the keys and wished them a nice night, Sharon tipped him with the remainder of the petty cash she had stashed in her bra. The look on his face was worth whatever loss they’d take for having no money later on. And they started the short drive to the airstrip.

“Go faster,” said Sharon.

“It’s a golf cart, it can only go so fast. Stop panicking, we’re fine,” said Natasha.

“I’m worried that—“

Glass breaking, lots and lots of glass breaking, loud enough to rupture an ear drum. Natasha looked over her shoulder and saw the exact scene. The CIA repelling down through broken windows into the governor’s party in search for the only two guests to leave so early. Guns drawn and commands shouted over the heads of the other party guests.

“Fuck—“

“It’s okay,” said Natasha. “It’s dark out, they won’t be expecting us to be out here—“

“If they tracked us here, it’s obvious we’re after the quinjet!” snapped Sharon.

“So we move on to plan B. Steal the jet the old fashioned way!”

“Just fuckin’ _move_ this golf cart!”

She was flooring it already but somehow pressing that little bit harder pushed the cart that little bit faster. Or at least it felt like it did. The commotion in the background in the house faded as the cart screeched onto the airstrip and the two of them barreled towards the hangar.

“FREEZE!” shouted the CIA agents guarding the hangar. They had no doubt been radioed and told the situation so there was no point in flashing them the clearance badge they fought so hard to get.

Natasha shot at the snipers on top of the hangar and Sharon got the ones guarding the entrance. Two went down quick. The third went down when she and Sharon bailed out of the golf cart and let it ram into him at full speed. They fumbled with the door for a few wasted seconds before Natasha shot the lock off of it and ran inside.

To the immediate right of the entrance was a panel of controls, directly in front of them was the plane that was facing the wrong way. The panel of controls was the only thing easy to see because of it’s backlights, the rest of the hangar was shrouded in the relative darkness of night.

“Does it need keys?” asked Sharon into darkness.

“No,” snapped Natasha. She was usually calm and collected under pressure but more was at stake than ever had been in the past and it was getting to her. Her mind wasn’t making the connections it usually did, she wasn’t figuring out how all the controls on the control panel worked. “Sharon, go get in the plane, I’m gonna figure out how to open the bay.”

“I’m not gonna leave—“

“I’m not asking you to leave me, just get in the fuckin’ plane and get it started!” snapped Natasha. It occurred to her briefly that those might be the last words she got to say to Sharon. She wanted to amend them but Sharon had already sprinted to the plane.

She could hear the sirens, she could hear the loud warnings to freeze and surrender. The CIA had displayed many times that they had orders to shoot on sight, it was amazing that they thought they could hypnotize her into thinking they changed their minds and were taking prisoners. Button after button, switch after switch, none the one she needed. She began pressing at random. Nothing happened when she pressed most. One got the lights to work. She hit that one again after deciding that staying in darkness was to their advantage.

“Can you get it?” said Sharon’s voice over a loud speaker. Natasha paused briefly then spotted a microphone embedded into the control panel. She pressed the button below it and spoke.

“I’m looking. Start the plane up. I’ll figure it out soon.”

The jet whirred for a few seconds before it turned all the way over and roared like the fantastic piece of engineering it was. Natasha’s brain whirred uncontrollably for a few more seconds before it halted at the foot of realization. A key-card scanner was embedded in the upper right corner of the panel. She slid the governor’s card and the screen in the middle of the panel lit up and asked her directly if she wanted to open the bay. One light press on the ‘confirm’ button and the bay door parted. Light from the airstrip flooded the hanger. The three sources of light on the airstrip were of course, the floodlights, the sirens in the police and CIA vehicles, and the piercing spotlights from the CIA’s helicopter.

“Come out with your hands up!” shouted one of the agents. Before she had the chance to move a muscle they fired on her. Sharon taxied the plane closer to her, it was her only means of helping at that point. She lowered the entrance ramp for her, it sparked and scraped against the ground. Natasha sprinted towards it with an uneven spray of bullets behind her. The speed picked up, the jet started to leave the ground a few inches at a time. Natasha used the last of her energy and jumped onto the ramp. The plane was so eager to get airborne that by the time Natasha launched herself onto the ramp it was nearly her entire height off the ground.

The weight of Natasha jumping on must’ve been tangible to Sharon because once Natasha hit the ramp the jet rose up and taxied out of the hangar and into the freeing night air. Natasha had never been on a plane that could hover, nor a plane that needed no airstrip or ramp-up to get airborne and siting on the access ramp of one mid-air was not something she thought she’d ever experience. They were hovering just below the helicopter and twenty odd feet above the squadron of CIA agents. For a moment, with the blue and red flashing lights below them and the night sky above them, she almost felt peaceful.

That ended when the chopper blades got louder and the agent inside of it got more aggressive with his shooting. Natasha watched the helicopter come around to the back of the plane where Natasha was still sitting. She was still so far gone and blissful that the plan actually worked that she forgot to react the enemy fire.

A bullet went right through her thigh. It was a hot, searing pain that she’d known before but would never be prepared for. The writhing alone would’ve caused her to fall clear off the ramp had Sharon not flicked the switch to close it, effectively sealing Natasha inside of the plane. She felt the force of the plane accelerating and though her thigh was bathing her blood it was comforting to know they really were free. No helicopter could catch them, no more bullets could penetrate them, they were out of the woods.

“WE DID IT!” screamed Sharon in the cockpit. The night sky got wider and grander and the ground got smaller and more insignificant than it had ever been. Natasha lay in the very back next to the weapons and parachutes. The ramp that had served as a entrance now served as the floor she was lying on, bleeding out on.

“Sharon,” mumbled Natasha. “Sharon, I got hit.”

“You what?”

“I’m bleeding,” said Natasha in a quiet voice that lacked any urgency at all.

“Let me—fuck—let me get us a little higher and I’ll come back there and fix it—you’re gonna be fine, Nat! That, I promise!”

Natasha hummed to herself in response. If she had to die this was probably the way to do it. In a blaze of glory with her girlfriend at the helm. Thing about dying in a blaze of glory was no one mentioned the behind the scenes shots of pain and fear. It filled her up and refused to leave. She was tossed around the back portion of the plane, her bloody leg lubricating the paths her sliding body took, until finally she heard Sharon come for her.

It wasn’t the calm collected Sharon that had tended her glass-wounds, or the panicked Sharon that had tended an ear-wound she thought was a head shot, but a completely new Sharon. With tears in her eyes and down her cheeks, a shake in her hands and complete uncertainty in her actions. Pressure was the only sensation Natasha felt, heavy pressure on her leg. Her hearing whited out and all she could do was watch Sharon cry and squeeze her thigh in hopes that it might just magically stop.

 

~~~~~~~~~

 

“She’s still breathing, though, Sharon. She’ll be okay.”

Natasha opened her eyes and saw the sky. The stars completely saturated the sky and told Natasha she was in the countryside somewhere and not in a plane. Her eyes closed for a moment and the sky was gone. Replaced with flashing lights and a consistent beeping sound at her side.

Her eyes wouldn’t open to their full capacity, her voice wouldn’t speak, and her muscles wouldn’t move. All she could do was catch a few last glimpses of her surroundings. From her limited field of vision she deduced that she was back in an aircraft of some sort but not one she’d ever seen or heard of. It looked so futuristic and efficient she wondered briefly if she was hallucinating.

A needle stuck her arm. It took most of her energy to look down and see the hand that had done it.

“She’s B positive,” said Sharon. She sounded so far away but Natasha could feel her hand on her wrist.

“I know,” replied Sam who was assembling what Natasha had to assume was a transfusion.

Every inch of her felt the force of the craft she was in take off. Her surroundings filled with new noises that came with being airborne, they could’ve deafened her. The mixture of the alien aircraft she was in and the disorienting noises and voices could’ve been enough to prove to her she had died. The only sensations that kept her grounded and ensured she hadn’t died just yet were Sharon’s hand on her wrist and Sam’s hand adjusting her IV.

“Barnes! You’re gonna fly us into the ocean you fuckin’ idiot!” shouted Sharon at her side.

“You wanna fly it, asshole?!” shouted a voice Natasha couldn’t see.

“Stop arguing and level off!” said Sam.

Sharon’s hand left her wrist. Natasha could just barely see Sharon walk by the foot of her bed over the tips of her own shoes. Sharon edged around whatever table Natasha was on and disappeared around a corner. Something in her wanted to follow but nothing outside of her listened. Her body stayed right where it was no matter what effort she put in.

“Bucky, disinfect that leg,” said Sam.

She hadn’t noticed Barnes’s presence at her side but there he was, cutting apart her bright blue dress to expose the wound. Barnes’s hands poured something on her thigh. She didn’t feel the burn she was supposed to feel, the burn that came with disinfection. And then she didn’t feel anything at all.

 

~~~~~~~~~

 

“How can you beat me in arm wrestling if you don’t have an arm?” said a voice.

“I have my other arm, idiot. And it’s stronger than both your arms combined,” said another voice that Natasha had never heard before.

“Alright, before you two go jumping down this rabbit hole I wanna add, one of my arms is worth eight of each of your arms and I would be the clear winner,” said a third voice that Natasha knew to be Sam.

“Sharon,” said the first voice. Steve. It was Steve. “Sharon, who would win in arm wrestling?”

“Can you guys keep it down, she needs to sleep,” said Sharon’s voice. Her perfect, clear voice sounded so strained and stressed.

“What Ms. Romanoff needs is to be woken up,” said T’challa. “If we let her sleep she will stay asleep.”

“I don’t know…” said Sharon.

“Look,” said Steve, “I’m used to the love of my life being in a coma.”

“I was frozen,” said the unknown voice.

“And Natasha’s not in a coma,” said Sam.

“The point is—you can’t worry every day. King T’challa’s got her in the best shape she can be. You don’t need to worry about if she’ll wake up, it’s just a matter of when,” said Steve.

“Mm,” said Natasha. Her muscles wouldn’t move and her eyes wouldn’t open but her voice still worked. A beeping, that she hadn’t been aware of before, got faster.

“Did…” said Sam, “did she just talk?”

Natasha felt a multitude of finger tips on her. One competent hand was checking her pulse, Sharon’s were cradling her head, and three other sets of hands were poking at her.

“Her heart rates up a bit, the monitor is right,” said T’challa. “Ms. Romanoff, it’s time to wake up. You can open your eyes, I know you can.”

She did. With a lot of effort and one fail attempt, she opened her eyes. Above her stood a choir of angels. At least that was how they appeared, all staring down at her with florescent lights haloing them. At her wrist stood T’challa, next to him was Sam and his grin. On her right stood Steve, and then Barnes. And someone behind her kissed her forehead.

“Where am I?” said Natasha. Sharon stood, her fingertips staying in contact with some part of Natasha as she made her way around the bed. Sharon looked tired, she looked worn out, and gorgeous all in one.

“We made it to Wakanda. Just barely,” said Sharon with a squeeze to her palm.

“Oh yeah?” said Natasha. “What about my leg?”

“Healing very well, Ms. Romanoff,” said T’challa.

“How long was I out?”

“Three days,” said Barnes.

“We’ve all been in here waiting for you to wake up,” said Steve.

“Wow, what a welcome wagon.” That comment brought a smirk to all of their faces, and a wide smile to Sharon’s.

“Alright, party’s over,” said Sam. “Let’s leave ‘em alone.”

Natasha couldn’t help blushing just a bit as everyone but Sharon cleared out of the room. The room, she noticed, was bright white and almost featureless from her vantage point. If she weren’t so lucid she’d swear she died.

“You told them all about us I see…” said Natasha. Her voice sounded raspier than usual, an impressive feat.

“It wasn’t much of a secret.” Sharon rolled a stool over to Natasha’s bedside. “Fury got word to them in the end. They met me a mile outside of where we took off. They helped me land and we got you on board for the flight over here."

“I remember a little of that,” said Natasha. “I remember being in a plane and Sam giving me an IV.”

“You were awake?” said Sharon. Her grip on Natasha’s hand tightened.

“Only for a minute.”

“Well…what happened was they radioed into our plane and we landed. Barnes and Wilson flew in on one of T’challa’s jets. They’re faster, lighter, and better equipped than anything I’ve ever flown before…I guess Fury also tipped them off about how close we were coming to getting seriously hurt so they brought a medically-inclined jet.”

“Was I strapped to a table?”

“A gurney. Sam wheeled it out then wheeled you in on it. It was pretty impressive how the whole plane worked—But that’s neither here not there. You did really well the whole flight and when we touched town here, T’challa had his own medical staff working on you.”

“I’m gonna have a gnarly scar,” laughed Natasha, trying to ease the tension of worry in Sharon’s face. It worked.

“It’ll look cool, don’t worry.”

“What’s it like here?”

“It’s beautiful.”

“Where are we?”

“In the countryside, there’re thick jungles on every side, it keeps this place hidden. But more specific than that, we’re in T’challa’s old vacation home turned hotel. Steve told me that his father, King T’chaka, used to use this place as a way to clear his head. He says his head’s at peace so we’re staying here until further notice.”

“So we made it?”

“So we made it.”

“Let me look around, I wanna see,” said Natasha.

“Fine, but promise you won’t die.”

Sharon helped Natasha sit up which was half the battle. Once she was sat up she could see her room was as white as the ceiling implied. Everything was bright and clean and reflective. So bright, in fact, that everything had a comforting glow around it.

Sharon helped her into a wheelchair. She attached Natasha’s IV and started the tour.

“We’re in the medical wing so I’ll snake you up to where everyone usually is,” said Sharon. She wheeled Natasha down two halls of medical facilities. “This is mostly for Barnes at this point. T’challa’s gifting him a new arm in his spare time. You’re the only other person to need actual medical attention here.”

“Aren’t I special.”

“Here, let me show you our bedroom,” said Sharon. Natasha would’ve commented on her use of ‘our’ if she hadn’t known how embarrassed Sharon would get.

The ornate door opened and Sharon wheeled her in. It was awe-inspiring. The art alone was enough to have Natasha gawking but the more Sharon showed her the more unbelievable it seemed. The bed had two remote controls, she couldn’t even imagine what the actual electronics in the room had. Sharon showed her the bathroom that was fitted with a tub large enough to be called a pool, a delicate pair of vanities, and a shower that looked more like an attraction at a theme park.

“How does he afford this for a guest room in a guest house?” said Natasha as her fingers danced over the ornate drawer handles that were just her height.

“He’s a king, Nat,” laughed Sharon. “C’mon, we’ll have plenty of time to enjoy this later. Let me show you the rest of the house.”

Natasha reluctantly left the bedroom full of more amenities than she thought existed.

“Sam, and Steve and Barnes are in the two rooms opposite this hall. Apparently Steve had our room but T’challa made him give it to us since you’re healing."

“Wait did you say ‘two’ rooms,” asked Natasha. “You mean…someone else is sharing a room?”

“I told you I was _completely_ confident that they wouldn’t have a problem with us. Now wait until you see the library. I got lost in there when Sam gave me the tour.”

“Oh so you weren’t at my bedside twenty-four-seven?” teased Natasha.

“I wasn’t, in fact, I took another lover while you were in your coma,” replied Sharon.

“I knew it.”

Sharon wheeled her through the library. Even the books looked rich. Sharon let her sign her name to the check-out roster for but didn’t let her peruse the books, she insisted on continuing the tour first. She wheeled her around at a pace slower than molasses but when Natasha complained Sharon insisted that Natasha, her wound, and her IV did not need to be ‘breaking the sound barrier’ on their first outing. Her final few pitstops came mercifully fast. The gym and the aquarium.

They skipped over two entire floors which Sharon referred to as ‘the king’s’ and emerged in what Natasha would have called a living room, but the entire house felt far too dignified and expensive to have a common name like ‘living room’. But as Sharon predicted, all four others were stationed up there. The room was white and glowing with only the occasional accent of dark wood to offset it all. The windows ran from ceiling to floor and were one seamless view into the outside unknown, only breaking that flow to transition from room to hallway in the back corner. It was a big room still but the concentration of people remained around the center coffee table where cards were being dealt.

“Hey!” said Sam. “She lives!”

“You’re up and out!” said Steve.

“I’ve been sleeping for three days, it’s time I took a walk,” said Natasha.

“What do you think of the place?” said Barnes.

“Did you show her the aquarium?” asked Steve.

“She did,” replied Natasha on Sharon’s behalf. “This place feels like I took a leap twenty years into the future, it’s incredible.”

“I was thinkin’ of redoing my house like this,” said Sam with a straight face. T’challa burst out laughing and Sam did too despite his best efforts. T’challa set down the cards Sam had dealt him and walked towards the curve in the window that signaled the end of the living room and the beginning of the hallway. He gestured for Sharon to follow so she wheeled Natasha over as well.

T’challa waited and made sure they were following before continuing down the hallway. It curved too drastically for Natasha to see what was on the other side but her attention was elsewhere. The hall had no walls, just more window like the room it fed into, and it let her see clear over the jungle’s canopies. It was hypnotically beautiful and, most noticeably, tranquil. A sensation she hadn’t experienced in a long time.

“Please, leave us, Ms. Carter,” said T’challa. Sharon abandoned her post at Natasha’s wheelchair and left the two of them alone. “Last time we saw each other, Ms. Romanoff…”

“I…I was confused,” said Natasha. T’challa nodded.

“I asked only one thing of you in exchange for my help. You didn’t fulfill your end of the bargain.”

Natasha averted her embarrassed eyes from T’challa to the greenery that surrounded her on either side. “There was a lot to think about. I did what was right for everyone and I’m sorry that it meant going back on my word to you."

“I can forgive you, Ms. Romanoff, there’s no need to get upset,” said T’challa. “In the end, Barnes wasn’t the culprit at all and…I suppose if you hadn’t betrayed me he would be too dead to tell us that himself.”

“So you’re not mad at me then, your highness?”

T’challa shook his head. “I’ll tell you what I told the others. Nothing gets into my country. You’re safe here. I can’t and I won’t babysit you and your recovery each day, especially now that you’re conscious.”

“Of course—I would never expect—“

“Ms. Romanoff, please, let me finish. This isn’t a permanent home for you and your friends, and your Sharon. I felt I owed Steve and Barnes, even Sam, a favor after making their attempts to get to the truth so difficult. And Barnes needed to be housed here for his cryogenics.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” said Natasha. “Did you say Barnes is going back into the ice?”

“He’s gone and come back already,” laughed T’challa. “He was under for five days before one of our doctors finally made it clear to everyone that freezing him would only hurt in the long run. But he needed these facilities. Once you heal, no one will need these facilities. I’m organizing somewhere more sustainable for you all but until them you will live here.”

“I’m grateful for that—“

“You do not have free reign of this place and my guards will not hesitate to put you in your place should you stray.”

“Of course—”

“And you may not disclose the location, though I doubt you even know it,” said T’challa with a smirk. “But those are my only rules aside from no redecorating. Tell me, can you abide by those rules?”

“Easily, your highness.”

“Then welcome home, Ms. Romanoff.” T’challa smiled back at Natasha who grinned from ear to ear.

“Thank you.”

He put a hand on her shoulder before walking back towards the room they’d been in, Sharon took his place at her side. She sat crosslegged next to her chair and stared out at the greenery with her.

“What’d he say?”

“He told me to break the news to you that he’s evicting you. Just you. Says it’s nothing personal but he doesn’t like you.”

Sharon laughed and pinched the arm that Natasha had resting on her arm rest. Natasha yanked her arm away and made a futile and half-hearted attempt to pretend to be mad. They sat in the residual silence that came when the laughter died down for a few minutes.

“I’m happy,” said Sharon, cracking the silence. “Really happy.”

“Me too,” replied Natasha, her eyes following the birds bursting through the canopy. She reached down and, without a word, Sharon found and held her hand. “And it really feels like I’m gonna stay that way this time.”


End file.
